Dennis’ Latest Legal Tech Notions—Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

Intro: Web 2.0, innovation, trends, collaboration, software, metadata… Got the world turning as fast as it can? Hear how technology can help. Legally speaking, with two of the top legal technology experts, authors, and lawyers; Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Welcome to The Kennedy-Mighell Report, here on, The Legal Talk Network.

[Music]

Dennis Kennedy: And welcome to Episode 345 of The Kennedy-Mighell Report. I’m Dennis Kennedy in Ann Arbor.

Tom Mighell: And I’m Tom Mighell in Dallas.

Dennis Kennedy: In our last episode, we interviewed Amani Smathers of Chapman and Cutler as part of our new Fresh Voices of Legal Tech Series. Have you ever thought about a career in legal tech, legal operations, legal process improvement or other areas, I now call new legal careers, new legal being one word. You want to listen to Amani’s career story that she shares.

In this episode, we decided it was once again time to create a new game for the podcast that we might use in future B segments. As you know, I tend to have a lot of ideas and Tom is very good at wedding ideas because of his naturally, realistic and hard-headed practical approach to new ideas as opposed to new headphones, Bluetooth speakers, and other gadgets, which he is much less.

Tom Mighell: What is that supposed to mean?

Dennis Kennedy: I guess we’ll find out later, won’t we? So that gave us an idea for a new game. Tom, what’s all on our agenda for this episode?

Tom Mighell: Well Dennis, in this edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, we will indeed be testing out a new game that we, I’d say we in the script, but I’m going to say Dennis is tentatively calling Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down.

In our second segment, we will actually return to our original game of Hot or Not. And as usual, we’ll finish up with our parting shots, that one tip website or observation that you can start to use the second that this podcast is over.

But first up, wedding some of Dennis’ new ideas in the form of a game we are calling Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down. Apparently I am to use my reality based approach on these ideas and the game itself Dennis is going to throw out a new idea, I’m going to ask any follow-up questions that I have and I’m going to give the idea thumbs up to indicate that Dennis should move the idea forward or thumbs down to the idea that should be thrown in the trash can.

In reviewing these ideas, I got the feeling that a lot of them are ideas Dennis is having for himself, not necessarily anybody else. So where I can and I think Dennis is going to do the same, we’re going to try to direct the discussion of why these ideas might be good or bad for anybody in general.

Dennis, I’m told by the script that I’ve been limbering up my thumbs for this show. Are you ready to throw out your first idea?

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. And I think you’re right, I took some personal things but they definitely have application. So the first one is really falls into category of when do I buy a new computer? So I’ve been looking at the 15-inch MacBook Air and so that’s my ideas that I should buy a new 15-inch MacBook Air. And the reason Tom is that I have a Mac Mini on my desktop. I have an HP laptop for work and I have an iPad Mini that I could use for speaking and other things.

But I have the Windows laptop and I have this iPad Mini I could use for speaking and then I have this 12-inch MacBook, which I understand is either hit the point of obsolescence, as some people call it, or is about to do that. So the question for me is should I go ahead with this 15-inch MacBook Air or am I just fooling myself into thinking that I actually need a new laptop that I’m not quite sure what I’m going to use it for when I have other computers, that basically feel like they solve most of needs I have and my only thing is I hate having an old obsolete laptop around.

Tom Mighell: You know, I thought I knew which way my thumb was going to go on this until you gave that introduction to this. So let’s come back to the — here’s my main question. Is the new MacBook Air designed to replace anything else but the old MacBook Pro?

Dennis Kennedy: No,

Tom Mighell: All right, so after you buy that, you will have two laptops, an iPad and a desktop.

Dennis Kennedy: Yes.

Tom Mighell: And you will use this new Mac, what have you been using the MacBook Pro for currently?

Dennis Kennedy: That MacBook?

Tom Mighell: Yeah.

Dennis Kennedy: It’s backup storage device at the moment.

Tom Mighell: Got it. So you want to buy a MacBook Air because it’s a big, shiny new thing?

(00:05:00)

Dennis Kennedy: That is a question and although I’m not a fan of using Windows especially when I have to use an old version of Windows on a laptop and I’m much more comfortable in the Apple environment and I say, well if I’m going to do speaking, it would be nice to have my own MacBook to do that and maybe it’s slightly possible, I might travel, but I sort of feel like the fact is that Windows laptop will satisfy most of my laptop needs.

Tom Mighell: All right, so let’s divorce this form you for just a minute and talk about the MacBook Air itself. So what’s not to like about the MacBook Air? It has a great body, it has great performance, it’s gotten good reviews, it has good battery life. Now one of the things that the MacBook Airs have not gotten a lot of good reviews on, is it they don’t have a lot of ports.

But frankly that’s nothing that a docking station or something couldn’t solve. That’s something that could be handled. Still a little bit bigger computer than you would expect for something that’s called the Air. Price is somewhere around like 1,250 bucks, which frankly for a laptop, these days is a good price. So —

Dennis Kennedy: Plus I get an education discount and 150 bucks for trading in the old MacBook.

Tom Mighell: Yes. So I find it, we won’t talk about the fact that you’re getting advantages from our educational system even though you already have a laptop from that educational system. We won’t discuss any of — that’s not really the purpose of this Thumbs Up or Down. Although, we might expose those types of issues as part of the discussion. So –

Dennis Kennedy: Not an issue, not an issue.

Tom Mighell: So, this idea is really only going to come from people who buy Macs. This idea is not going to come from me. If you’re asking for me because I’m a Windows guy, I had a Mac for a while. It just didn’t work for me. It’s a perfectly great machine. It works just fine. I’ve been having problems with my Android phone and I keep getting told why not just buy an iPhone. It just works.

Well because I just don’t like it. So for me, that’s a thumbs down. It would just be a thumbs down as a general idea. For you, I’m torn because I think it’s a thumbs up if you really needed it. But I’m not convinced you really need it. I would just say hey there’s plenty of cloud storage you can purchase for much cheaper than a $1,250 MacBook Air, if that’s all it’s going to be if it’s going to replace your other one and because you might bring it or you might have it that feels a lot like when I see a new Google device that I have to have. I feel like I’m making excuses for it.

So I’m wavering here. I’m going to based on what you have told me, you haven’t sold me. So I’m going to say thumbs down.

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, I ticked it. I can’t — when I go to jobs to be done and what am I hiring it for? I can’t get over the hump.

So my next one is I’m thinking about but a lot of people are going to be thinking about this and in fact Tom, you and I talked about this recently but Microsoft is talking about its major addition of generative AI into the what I’ll call the whole Microsoft 365 Suite of tools and it’s called Copilot. It’s going to be interesting for a number of — any number of reasons, not the least of which is all these people trying to put together generative AI usage policies for their employees are just going to freak out once they find out how much AI is in the Microsoft Suite.

But Microsoft came out and said they’re going to charge $30 a month for that. So my inclination was — my reaction was like sign me up. So my idea is that it does make sense to pay the extra money for the Copilot features, sight unseen when they come out because the tremendous potential of starting to use this right away. So thumbs up, thumbs down, Tom?

Tom Mighell: Well, I of course, would expect that level of unabashed support for an AI thing given how much time you currently spend with ChatGPT just on a daily basis. I think that sight unseen is the exact right way to put it. I don’t have any questions for you because I’m excited about this too.

I’ve been excited about Copilot for a long time, which is why I was both saddened and infuriated by the fact that they’re charging $30 and we need to make sure we’re clear on this. It’s not $30 a month, it’s $30 per user per month, let’s be clear about that. So if you have a firm and you wanted for everybody in your firm, you are shelling out $30 per person per month for Copilot.

Now you can buy a license for yourself, which is kind of what I’m thinking about doing for me and my company. I have really and I just to give an example, I’ve really wanted Microsoft Project, Microsoft Project on the web, I think is a much better product than the software standalone application they have.

(00:10:01)

It has a lot more features. It ties into Microsoft Teams but guess what? It’s also the same price and I’ve held off on it because I just can’t justify that for the team that I’ve got. But see, here’s one of the limiters to it is that you have to have a Business Microsoft 365 account to use it.

So, if you’re using a home version, a personal version not available to you. You have to have at a minimum a Business Premium, Business Standard, or if you’ve got the bigger E3 or E5 license, then that you had that available. But if you’ve got anything that’s personal, you are completely out of luck, you’re not going to be able to use it.

Do I want this for everybody in my company? I think the answer is yes but at $30 a month, I’m not sure that people will use it. I think that people won’t be quite as excited as me. One of the things that I want to use it the most for is just the idea that I can have a meeting with a client. I don’t have to worry about taking notes, it’s taking notes for me, it’s generating the action items right after that and even going so far as to create tasks for those items and assigning them to the people that they were signed to in the meeting.

Just that one feature of Copilot is exciting to me enough to shell out 30 bucks for me to use it. I’ll probably go ahead and get it anyway. So I guess where I’m going to — what I’ve been saying that’s my long-winded answer of saying that while my brain says thumbs down, my heart will say thumbs way up for this.

Dennis Kennedy: Next idea is that Microsoft should offer Copilot free to podcasters like us.

Tom Mighell: Thumbs, all thumbs, all thumbs way up.

Dennis Kennedy: So my next idea is as people are going back to the office and people like to down talk Zoom. I find it that so much about the Zoom era has been so positive for me and one of the things that people used to do where these Ask Me Anything webinars, you just get like a kind of give a topic and people would show up, and they could ask the host anything and you have these conversations and stuff,

And I’m actually thinking about trying that Tom, doing it free to start, God forbid, maybe even trying to make a little money in the future. But so that’s my ideas is returning to the Ask Me Anything webinars. Not surprisingly, the thing that makes sense would be that I’ve been toying with is ChatGPT for personal productivity.

So Ask Me Anything webinars Tom, where you at on that?

Tom Mighell: Well, so what you just said raises some questions. So making a business out of it, making a regular thing out of it, are you planning on doing Ask Me Anything with these webinars on ChatGPT every time or you’re going to have different categories, topics. How’s that going to work?

Dennis Kennedy: I think it could be ChatGPT every time but Tom, you know from the podcast, it’s hard for – I go to where my interests are and what the audience interests might be. I think I could sustain it on ChatGPT for a while, but that would be the notion and I still — when you ask it that way, I sort of see this as a freebie just to introduce, to give me a chance to run things by people, find a community and then maybe do other things with it, community to monetize it.

Tom Mighell: So, here’s the challenge with doing it. To me, here’s the challenge with doing it on one topic is that once the audience shows up for your first one, will they show up for subsequent ones or will you have to gen up a whole new audience every single time because the previous audience said, well I think I’ve learned what I need to learn about ChatGPT and there’s nothing new under the sun or you’re going to have to convince them every time.

Hey, there is new stuff that I know about this. What I’m used to seeing with Ask Me Anythings is the old style Ask Me Anythings, it used to be on Reddit, is that celebrities would just show up on Reddit that said, I’m actor Idris Elba and ask me anything. And people would show up just because it was Idris Elba and they wanted to just ask questions to him.

So to me, the biggest requirement of an AMA is if you don’t have name recognition, you’ve got to have a topic that people are going to want to ask questions about. So there’s obviously got to be some vetting out there. If it’s not something that people are interested in or if it’s a topic that saturated the market, you’re risking not getting the audience you want, or maybe you get exactly the audience you want. If you’re okay with maybe a small intimate group of people having a more in-depth conversation with smaller people than lots of people asking questions.

And you know, I think that one of the challenges I’ve seen some of the people on Reddit, it makes sense for someone like Idris Elba to host it because he’s a known quantity. But if someone says I’m John Smith and I wrote the book the such-and-such, and if nobody knows what that book is then nobody is showing up for that AMA.

(00:14:58)

And I think that one of the challenges people who hosts AMAs is they have to be self-aware that they’re going to draw the crowd and one of the ways to do that is and I think you’ve done that to a certain extent. You’ve gone out on LinkedIn to see kind of what to gauge the interest but that also feels to me like the same thing that we do with my company.

We got 100 signups for a webinar. We generally count on half of that to show up or even less. So you have to be skeptical, take what your numbers are with a grain of salt. So I’m going to say for me, AMAs are a thumbs down for me personally. I don’t know that that would be something I would want to do, but I am a supportive thumbs up to the people who want to make it happen.

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. I might think you want to do the test. So I want to do testing, I think you have to just have, it’s not a break even as the right word but like what makes — what audience is big enough to justify the effort that you put into it. I don’t know that you and I would ever do an Ask Me Anything for the podcast.

Although, I guess we could, I could imagine lawyers doing an Ask Me Anything like about estate planning or there are other things somebody might do. But I think that it is a way to use Zoom that was successful for a while and it might be worth coming back, but your points are all well taken.

The last one I have for this segment Tom is one I had to explain to you off the air. So I took a class in scenario planning and sort of future strategies. So one of the ideas that was core to this was looking for ways to track signals. So sort of the developments in the news, other things that helped kind of prove or support your hypothesis about where things are going in the future.

And so that raises the issue of like how do I — once I find those signals, so I could say oh I see — so this year, you could say oh I’m definitely seeing signals that big law firms are laying people off and they’re delaying the start and I would like to collect those so I see what’s going on. See if I can see if there’s a pattern there that I might be able to act on. So I’m just taking these little signals, see if they turn into a pattern.

So in the past, we might have used Twitter, we might have used RSS readers, other things like that. And so there’s this notion of finding, collecting and then kind of reviewing them and deciding what to do with them, which is, part of the second brain concept as well as people will probably recognize.

So I think this is a good idea that I want to try figure out exactly how to do it is not a good idea. But I think as Twitter breaks down other things that going to a more intentional use of news, social media, other things to actually track it for useful signals is a good thing. So tools aside Tom, what’s your reaction to that idea of just doing more signal tracking?

Tom Mighell: Well I don’t think we can do it tools aside. I think we have to talk about the tools because a minute ago, you said, in the past we would have used RSS or Twitter. What would you use now to do that, if not RSS or I mean I think Twitter, I take your point on Twitter but what would you not — I mean, my first recommendation would be to find ways to use a tool like Feedly, which has artificial intelligence to train it to bring you back trends and to search for keywords.

And to say, I want to find web things that come back for that or to set up a Google search that says, I want to search for these types of things and bring back the keywords that you find. I mean, I think I struggle with the idea only because I haven’t worked with the tools enough to know what’s going to — whether there are new tools out there that would be useful to doing it.

Obviously, once you capture the information, once you’ve got it, the second brain notion is a great idea of a place to have it. But the thing though is that you don’t just want something that’s going to be able to track it. You want it also to be able to tell you it’s a trend, right. I mean you’re going to need something that’s going to have to be able to organize it or measure it, so that you’re able to unless you are able to look through a whole lot of stories and say, you know, I got ten stories today and five of them, six of them are on layoffs at AM Law 50 firms and wow, that’s looks like a trend to me, that’s the question.

Do you want it to be that smart or what? Because, I think, the tools are out there. So to me, it’s hard to separate. I think I’m thumbs up on the idea because to me, it’s not any different from trying to track other things. It feels like a very similar type activity. The real question and the hard — what’s challenging here is how are you going to do it?

(00:20:06)

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, I think that the goal is really good and I think you have to — some of the tools that you might have used in the past aren’t working so well. And I think you need to have an integrated approach and a layer type of approach and you’re going to use a number of tools, certain ways you could use the AI tools once you’ve collected things.

But I think kind of getting a sense of what’s all out there and kind of packaging them together is the challenge and my sense is that for what I do especially with the teaching, the innovation, the other things like that, the signals tracking makes sense. It could be that for lawyers, especially in areas where there’s a lot of things developing or a lot of change, this could be a useful approach as well.

Dennis Kennedy: I just think, you’re right, Tom. I think you put your finger on it. The tools are just not as focused as they used to be and it’s going to be creating something that will work for you.

Tom Mighell: I have a good hunch that Dennis has even more ideas that he wants to run by you and me. But before we do that, let’s take a quick break for a message from our sponsors.

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Dennis Kennedy: And we are back. Tom, I actually do have plenty more ideas, but the big question is, how many more do you want to reject or accept?

Tom Mighell: Well, just hit me and let’s see what happens.

Dennis Kennedy: So this will be more of a lightning round, I think. So I had this idea for what I’m doing at Michigan State. So this semester I’m teaching a class in cybersecurity and data protection, and I did a pilot last year and you know this well, Tom, but in the data privacy world, especially the data privacy legal world, there’s a certification called CIPP and sort of the standard one for people who want to go into data privacy law and get a job in that is the CIPP/U.S. which is about us data privacy law, such that the U.S. has data privacy laws. And we experimented with a prep class so law students would get essentially a free prep class and then they could go take the test to get that exam with the idea that if you got this certificate, this certification as a 2L or as a 3L, it would give you a head start in the job market, because the data privacy lawyers are probably one of the hottest areas where you see hiring. So I like this idea, Tom, and I wanted to vet that one with you.

Tom Mighell: So here’s my problem with this idea. My problem with the idea is that if we’re talking about prep, then you have to focus first on privacy principles. All privacy laws are based in whole and part on the same basic privacy principles, where we’re talking about the EU or the United States or Singapore or anywhere where there are privacy laws. And then after mastering the principles, I think I am worried that it is too limiting to just say that do you want a US certification. I mean the certifications that are available is you can get an EU certification, which is what I have. You can get a technology certification if you want to actually go into privacy technology. Or, if you want to decide that you want to manage a privacy program, then you can actually get a program management certification. And so I think we’ve mentioned on the podcast that in general a U.S. privacy certification is a good thing to get, but if you’re going to practice law or maybe go into some kind of privacy work, I would say if we could be open to getting certified in other ways, should there be a way to structure that class, that prep class, to enable people to be able to take whatever one they wanted to.

(00:25:06)

And maybe that’s too hard in the law school setting, but I feel like if you do it just from a U.S. standpoint, then I would just want to find a way to let people choose their own adventure.

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, I think that’s valid. What I’m looking at the start is a pure teach to the test for the U.S. one, give students interested in an advantage in the job market. Look at the results from that and the level of interest and see whether it could go further or whether it could be something we offer to alumni or other people, others as a prep course. So that’s sort of my thinking there. Next, idea Tom is something, let me — I have another law school class question. So I’ve been thinking about what and this is almost a signals tracker notion to say what is an area coming in technology and law that probably the law schools aren’t addressing yet that would fit what I’m doing and that would generate sufficient interest to create a new class. And so the idea Tom, is climate technology law and that’s all I’m going to say and I just want to get your reaction to that.

Tom Mighell: So at first I was skeptical about this and I was thinking why is there such a thing as climate technology law, but then I realized that and I found that there are actually classes right now on fintech law. But what that is, is not about the technology itself. It’s about the laws and policies that are applicable to it. So there are law firms that are already marketing climate technology practices but what they’re saying there in those practices is that they span more traditional legal topics in the context of venture capital and intellectual property and real estate law. So I’m thumbs up to the extent that students need to learn how to serve these types of companies because I’m assuming that most of the climate tech law stuff will be how to work for climate tech companies, the startups and the ones that are established. I mean, they’re certainly increasing in number and importance. So I guess I am a cautious thumbs upon something like this because lawyers are going to need to provide these kinds of services.

Dennis Kennedy: My sense is that I’m trying to find things where the jobs are likely to be in a few years so this is intriguing to me. And then the last idea I have, Tom, is I touched on a little bit is like I’m doing a lot of things and other people do things and I got invited to do some CLE presentations here locally which I usually do the local ones. And so the question becomes, what stuff that I’m doing that I think is really unique, that I don’t see other people doing, that I want to continue doing for free, sort of for the good of the profession. The good of other things and what things I want to do proprietary and for pay and what I may not want to release at all, which I think is the way I’m leaning with some of the ChatGPT tools I’m developing, is to keep them with me and not share them. And then I say how do you monetize that? We’ve talked about mighty networks community but the thing that people are doing today which just I have this visceral no reaction, but so many people are doing it and that’s the Substack newsletter with subscriptions. And so Tom, my question for you is doing a Substack newsletter that people subscribe to for pay with something unique that I provide or we can kind of put this out to any lawyer with something unique that a lawyer or any other person who produces content wants to provide. Is the Substack newsletter the way to go these days?

Tom Mighell: So I struggle to talk about this because this is where when COVID started up and I needed a hobby, that’s when I fired the blog back up again. But those of you who’ve been listening to me for a while know that I did a little newsletter called the Internet Legal Research weekly for a while that if I had charged for that would have been a great second source of income for me. And so I thought, well, what if I go ahead and go on to Substack and do a newsletter about the technology stories for consumer technology that lawyers need to know about.

(00:30:01)

Why would you go and go read the technology websites? You go to one place, you get what I need to talk about. And I thought, okay, I’m going to get to the point where I get enough subscribers and then maybe I charge a buck a month or something minor and not a lot of money. I’m not super interested right now on charging a lot of money and this would be kind of dipping my toes in the water but I’m conflicted about that. I mean what you’re describing is the standard content creator move. Try to monetize what you create. There are a bunch of ways to do it, and Substack is certainly one of the more popular ways right now that people are doing it. In fact, Substack has created a whole Twitter like clone within itself where subscribers to the newsletters can talk to the authors themselves in a Twitter like environment. So I think that’s kind of interesting. I’m thumbs up on monetization in general. Everybody needs to make a buck. If you can do it, then great. As a consumer of monetized content, I have to say I’m a little bit thumbs down, not because I want everything to be free, but because everyone is charging for their content now, and I have to be really thoughtful about who I pay for, or I could end up spending a whole lot of money. I mean this is — I don’t know if this is something where we talk about Kevin Kelly’s thousand true fans and saying you should get the people who are going to really pay for it, because you might not be able to get that many fans because everybody’s paying for other stuff.  But I’m trying to get a hold of my subscriptions right now by looking at, you know, I created and quicken a report for my subscription, so I can see what I’m paying for and I’m going to go through it and start cutting things out but that’s a whole another discussion. But to me, the main downside to doing it is, will your customers, will your consumers really purchase it? If it’s valuable and they’ll pay for it, that’s great. But I have to cut the lines at some point as to which is the most valuable to me, and that is a decision made by the consumer. So I guess I’m thumbs up for you doing that. I’m a little thumbs down on having to pay for it.

Dennis Kennedy: And also having to produce it. I think one of my concerns about an email newsletter is that, to use your example, you go like, I’m going to do this. It’s going to be a dollar a month, and you have three subscribers and for $36 for the year, you feel like you’re up against a deadline to produce a newsletter every —

Tom Mighell: Right now in my Substack, I would be making a cool $960 a year. So that’d be great. All right. Okay. I think that’s enough ideas for one episode and probably maybe two episodes, but we’re going to talk about this. We’re going to see what you all think about this. Do you like the idea? Do you not like the ideas? Do we want to still talk about it? We’re trying to not just talk about Dennis’ ideas, but what these things mean for you in general. Give us your feedback. We’ll tell you how to get in touch with us later. But in the meantime, before we move on to our next segment, we’re going to take a quick break for a message from our sponsor.

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Tom Mighell: And now let’s get back to the Kennedy Mighell report. I’m Tom Mighell.

Dennis Kennedy: And I’m Dennis Kennedy. So we definitely want your feedback on the thumbs up thumbs down game and whether we should turn that into a regular segment, probably in this B segment with probably just one idea that we’ll do but we’ll see how that goes. But we’d really appreciate feedback on that. So we haven’t played our last game, which we called hot or not in a while. And with the current temperatures, Tom, in Dallas, which I don’t even want you to tell us what they are because I don’t want to hear it, it seemed like a great time to bring back the game. So in the game we pick a legal tech topic and decide whether it is hot or not. We might agree, we might disagree, but that’s the whole point of the game.

(00:35:00)

So here’s our topic, because I’ve been hearing about this a little bit recently, Tom, taking this time right now with all the AI talk going on to revise your law firm’s technology strategic plan, hot or not.

Tom Mighell: So my first reaction is whether this really qualifies for hot or not. Because first, it assumes that most law firms have technology strategic plans, which I am doubtful of that I know that many do, but not most. I would argue that most do not have any type of plan for managing their technology. Second, hot means lots of firms are doing it right now or not, which means they’re not doing it right now. And you say you’re hearing stuff, but it’s also not something that law firms advertise either. They’re not, hey, we’re doing our technology strategic planning doesn’t come out. The lack of news that I see on it might suggest it’s not hot. You may hear different things. So instead, I’m going to say it’s something that should be hot, if not this time of year, sometime during the year for sure. If you don’t have a strategic plan, obviously you need to draft one if you’ve got one. I hope you are thinking to beat Dennis to the punch. I hope you are thinking about what generational AI might mean for your law firm in the next couple of years. It might not affect you now, but you can’t say that it won’t be there in an impact in the next year or certainly two years from now, and whether or not you need to be starting to think about the technology investments you need to make to deal with that. Whether that’s just a Microsoft Copilot subscription or something more advanced. I think that’s just one example of why you should be updating your strategic plan. But I’m betting there are a lot of other ways Dennis can talk about that. Your firm’s technology can improve, evolve, innovate over the next year after that. So what are you waiting for, Dennis? I don’t think this feels like it seems like a topic that is not likely to cause disagreement or am I wrong?

Dennis Kennedy: I’m going to say it’s not hot, but I agree with you that March 2020 was a wakeup call to redo law firms strategic planning. I think a lot of people just did tactical planning and reactive planning. I think that this generative AI era does, even though you did call it generational, which might —

Tom Mighell: Did I say that? It’s generative? Sorry.

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, it sort of feels like it’s a generational time to really address law firms.

Tom Mighell: Let’s see if they can replace my mistake with a generated AI voice.

Dennis Kennedy: So I think it’s a good time. Actually, what I was hearing is people deciding not to address their strategic plans. And I also heard of fairly significant firms putting a complete ban on using the generative AI tools. So I think that lawyers, for whatever reason, are going in the wrong direction. So I’m saying this is not and I think it’s very sad and I think the firms that step up to this potentially get a great competitive advantage. So now it’s time for our parting shots. That one tip website or observation you can use the second this podcast ends. Tom, take it away.

Tom Mighell: So, much like Dennis talks all the time about ChatGPT, I’m going to return to a favorite topic of mine, which I do not talk about all the time. Now, it’s been a while, and that is speakers. Not headphones, not headsets and anything like that, but we’re going to talk about speakers. I’ve been having some Bluetooth issues between my phone and various speakers in my house. And so I had been trying different brands and I decided I’m going back to tried and true because I have never had an issue with a Wonderboom speaker by Ultimate Ears. I have one that I use for my desktop. That’s a portable Bluetooth. It’s a waterproof Bluetooth. I love it. I don’t need anything more than that. It works perfect for my desktop. But I needed a portable one. I needed one that a smaller one that I could actually take. We take a speaker on vacation, so if we want to watch TV or something on the iPad, we have a speaker. It makes it sound a lot better. Things that I can bring around the house. If I want to go in different parts of the house that don’t have speakers and listen to music or podcasts or whatever, I’ve got them. The Wonderboom three is a very small, compact, but very powerful speaker. It’s about $99. It’s a great buy, and it just works so well. So if you are in the market or need a smaller, more portable speaker, it even comes with his own carrying case, Wonderboom 3 is a great option. Dennis?

Dennis Kennedy: And some people who are interested in these Bluetooth speakers might see if you’re going to have a garage sale on some of the ones that you don’t use anymore.

Tom Mighell: I have a Sonos Roam speaker that does not work anymore with my phone, but that’s not real advertisement for you to come buy them. But hey, I’ll take any offers anybody wants to make.

(00:40:06)

Dennis Kennedy: So a lot of lawyers are still wondering, what is the whole point of AI? How is it going to help me? NetDocuments, the document management company, introduced or is in the process of introducing a new product called ndMAX, and it’s the first set of tools they’re going to roll out is called Pattern Builder Max. And so Pattern Builder is their document automation tool built within the document management system. So what NetDocuments did is something that Tom and I always advocate is like, you go out and you talk to your customers and find out what their needs are and then you build a set of tools and technologies that respond to that. And so we’ll give in the show notes and this is, I mean I’ll give it here as well but it’ll be in the show notes. So www.netdocuments.com/ndmax. One of the things that will be available there is a demo of what this does and I think that if you watch this and you’re not really understanding what AI might actually do for you in your practice, and you feel like you’re missing out on the thing, that’s going to draft a perfect supreme court brief and argue it for you. This will hit you right where you’re at and show you some ways that AI can help you. And you’ll be able to make a good determination whether this is a tool that will be meaningful for you that you need to explore or something that you can decide to wait for a little while on.

Tom Mighell: And so that wraps it up for this edition of The Kennedy Mile Report. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. You can find show notes for this episode on the LegalTalk Networks page for our show. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes, on the LegalTalk Network site, or in your favorite podcast app. If you’d like to get in touch with us, remember, you can always find us on LinkedIn, less so on Twitter, maybe on Bluesky or Threads. We can be seen over there periodically. Or please leave us a voicemail. We’d love to answer your question or hear from you. Maybe thumbs up or thumbs down on our thumbs up game. You can leave us a voicemail at 720-441-6820.

[Music]

So until the next podcast, I’m Tom Mighell.

Dennis Kennedy: And I’m Dennis Kennedy and you’ve been listening to the Kennedy-Mighell Report, a podcast on legal technology with an internet focus. As always, a big thank you to the LegalTalk Network team for producing and distributing this podcast. We’ll see you next time for another episode of the Kennedy Mile Report on the LegalTalk Network.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the Kennedy-Mighell Report. Check out Dennis and Tom’s book, “The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies:  Smart Ways to Work Together” from ABA Books or Amazon. And join us every other week for another edition of The Kennedy Mile Report, only on the Legaltalk Network.

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