How Lawyers Can Enhance Legal Services and Stay Ahead in the Industry with AI

Episode Notes

Transcript

Molly Ranns:

Hello and welcome to another edition of the State Bar of Michigan’s On Balance Podcast on Legal Talk Network. I’m Molly Ranns.

JoAnn Hathaway:

And I’m JoAnn Hathaway. We are very pleased to have John Mitchell Jackson join us today to talk about how lawyers can enhance their legal services and stay ahead in the industry by using artificial intelligence. Mitch is the CEO of Jackson and Wilson, a California Litigation law firm that has been delivering outstanding results for over 30 years. He is also the founder of Maneuver Mediation, a private global video mediation service that helps clients turn conflict into collaboration. And with that Mitch, could you share some additional information about yourself with our listeners please?

Mitch Jackson:

JoAnn, thanks for having me on. Molly, it’s so nice to meet you and I’ll keep it short and sweet. What an important topic, what an exciting time to practice law I bring to the table. Just for context. 30 plus years of handling all types of Litigation matters, diving into technology in the late eighties, embracing the web back in 1995, leveraging the power of social media to build a global brand during the two thousands, and now with artificial intelligence, I think everything that we’ve done is going to seem rather insignificant compared to what we can do today and what lawyers will be able to bring to the table moving forward by leveraging artificial intelligence Web3 technologies such as computing and the metaverse and also decentralized technology. So I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to share specific ways that lawyers can start using AI in their practice today moving forward to create better client experiences and to hopefully help turn good lawyers into great lawyers. It’s great to be here.

Molly Ranns:

Well, thank you so much, Mitch. We are grateful that you are here with us today. To get started, let me ask you this. How has AI impacted the legal industry specifically in terms of efficiency and accuracy in legal research and document review?

Mitch Jackson:

Isn’t it amazing how quickly things are changing? For example, speaking on the law droid panel, going back to Nashville at the Clio convention, things have changed so much since both of those events and I think the simple answer is it’s allowing us to be faster and better. Speed is now not an option. Speed is a strategy. I think embracing AI to create better client experiences, and we’re going to talk about that today, is key for every law firm, for every lawyer or legal support team, quality of life for lawyers. I think if you use AI the right way and we’re going to be diving into specific ways and specific platforms to do this, it can actually improve the quality of life. As a lawyer, I’ve been practicing for we say 30 plus years, but I think it’s 36 years now, and I’ve never been more excited to roll out of bed in the morning and leverage the power of AI to do all of the above.

For example, one way that AI can be used and we’re using it right now is I went for an early paddle. I’m in Southern California. We live down near Dana Point and there’s an island, and I was out for an early paddle around the island, came back to the car, got in catching my breath, had a cup of coffee waiting for me, and a note came up to research a new California statute on our discovery. It’s 2016 0.09 and it basically mimics the federal disclosure policy when it comes to civil discovery. It’s new here in California as of January 1st, 2024. So I asked pi ai, which is a platform I’m going be talking about a little bit. It’s not a legal platform, but I asked it to tell me more about the new civil discovery statute. I didn’t even mention the code section. It brought up an answer using a voice as though a lawyer or senior partner with 20 years of Litigation and discovery experience had researched this statute, had researched the impact on California Litigation, and it shared with me in about 45 to 60 seconds everything I needed to know about the statute.

Now, was it accurate? I wasn’t sure. So when I came back to the house, I checked out my legal research services and confirmed that everything that PI AI told me was accurate. I then went over to logs, copilot and chat GT four asking the same question just to test things out because that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m kicking the tires on ai. And long story short, between one or all three resources, I had a very good working understanding of the new discovery obligations that literally were provided to me within 30 to 45 seconds. The first time I queried this AI service, I then just for fun thought to myself, okay, write an email to opposing Counsel making a request under the new discovery code for discovery, and it within 15 seconds created a dynamite email template that we can now start using moving forward.

That didn’t require any effort on my team. It didn’t require any resources of the firm, but it allowed me to create something that I’m going to tweak a couple of things to personalize it, but it’s just an outstanding email that starts the discovery process under the new 2016 0.09 statute here in California. So that’s one way that AI has impacted the legal industry. It allows you to easily and quickly get answers, get results, and create content in order to service our clients better. 10 years ago, that would’ve taken all morning to do what I’ve just described. I literally did it originally in about 45 seconds. And when you think about this is as bad as AI will ever be, it only gets better each and every day. Imagine where we’ll be in 12 to 18 months. Imagine where we’ll be in five to 10 years. These are some of the things that we’re going to be talking about today. So that’s just a great example of how it can speed up the delivery and service of legal services, how it can improve the client experience because they can get answers immediately and it can improve your quality of life. You don’t have to spend all day to do legal research and create content. So it’s, it’s already been a great day.

JoAnn Hathaway:

Exciting. What are the key benefits of integrating AI into legal practices such as predictive analytics for case outcomes and risk assessment?

Mitch Jackson:

I can tell you what we’re doing and it seems to be working really, really well. For example, we’re using different AI services, whether it’s chat GT four, which is a page service, whether it’s logs copilot, whether it’s perplexity, and if I’m picking a jury, for example, in a very conservative venue, what I’ll do is I’ll feed into the AI chatbot, the local news, I’ll feed into it the personality of the community or the conservative. Are they liberal? What are some of the trending topics that community’s talking about? And I’ll ask, we’ll also put in the facts of our case. We’ll put in the different issues that we want to focus on, and we’ll ask the AI to come up with 20, 30, 40, 50 open-ended questions that it would suggest that I ask my potential jury panel in order to get a very good feel of who’s sitting in the jury box not to drawing cases for a long time.

I’m really good at picking jurors. I think that’s one of my strong points, but inevitably, every time I do this, it’ll come up with four or five questions that I really hadn’t thought about. And so we’re using AI to help us craft open-ended questions, whether it’s for a jury trial and arbitration or mediation. Another thing that we’re using AI for right now is I do serve as a private mediator through Zoom or Google Meet or virtual mediations. A lot of my mediations are civil cases, but also Web3 cases, very interesting, new trending technology issues involving IP smart contracts and things like this that we’ll talk about later. And what I’ve noticed is when the parties are in breakout rooms, and I think every lawyer can do this in real life in using their existing conference rooms, or if you have an online event taking place like a mediation and in breakout rooms, I’ll step out and let the clients know, or the parties know, I’m going to grab a cup of coffee or give this some thought.

I want them to talk to each other and figure out what they want to do. And then what we do is we go ahead and we’ve already set up an AI bot that has all of the legal briefs in it, the personalities of the parties, the personalities of Counsel, the pertinent issues in this particular mediation, and I’ll ask that bot, give me some open-ended questions to get past this particular impasse, give some open-ended questions to help me keep the conversation going when I jump back into the breakout room on Zoom. And like I mentioned, it helps spark a new idea that I can bring back to the parties to continue the conversation. So whether you are practicing online or you are having a Zoom communication with a client or in the real world, you’re bouncing back and forth between conference rooms or courthouses, you can use this technology to really get a fresh perspective on how to address issues on how to get past impasse and frankly how to get cases settled.

Real quick, going back to the first question, how is AI helping when it comes to legal research, when it comes to document review and things like this? I do want to share an example because I think it’s really, really important right now. For example, what we did with the Elon Musk versus open AI case that’s pending brand new lawsuit is we downloaded the complaint and we uploaded it back into chat GT four, and we asked chat GT four to tell us what the issues were in the case and how did it feel the case would turn out based upon current laws, rules and regulations. And it actually predicted how it felt that case would turn out. What’s interesting about that is we did the same thing with the Andy Warhol Prince copyright case, and we asked AI based upon the briefs of all parties, based upon the current personalities of all sitting United States Supreme Court justices, how did it think that that case would be decided?

And I shared all this on LinkedIn in real time, we’re testing out GPT four and I wanted to see how accurate would be. Within 30 seconds it printed out, it went through two 90 page appellate briefs and it printed out a decision that the court may give. That turned out to be pretty darn close to how the court decided. And so taking this back into our own practices, I think it’s really important for lawyers to know that right now with today’s technology, you can put in briefs and pleadings and issues and you can add the personalities of the judge and Counsel past case results, and you can allow it to take you by the hand and guide you and your clients towards a desired outcome or resolution. It’s so powerful that when you go back in and you reprompt these systems with follow-up questions and follow up details and follow up concerns, it will fine tune its responses to suit your particular needs. So with respect to the two initial questions that we’ve, I want everyone to know that as of today, right now, this technology is allowing us to do all the above for me, frankly, using it during live mediations in a side window when I step out of a breakout room or preparing for deposition or trial, that’s been the gravy on the baked potato that I really love. That’s really been making a difference in our practice.

Molly Ranns:

Mitch, you’ve given a lot of great real life examples of how AI can help good lawyers become better lawyers. Can you explain how AI can enhance client service and satisfaction, whether through improved communication, personalized insights, or faster response times?

Mitch Jackson:

I think we’re all tired of reading template, text template emails. We know they’re not personalized for us, and what we’ve been doing with AI is we’re setting up individual chat bot AI for each client or each case in that chat bot, and by the way, the content’s protected. Okay. You always want to think about privacy issues, intellectual property issues, and we’re going to talk about that. But in the technology we’re using, everything we put in there is private, confidential, and we’re also putting in, like I mentioned earlier, the personalities of our clients. What are their needs? What’s their focus? What are they looking for as to the outcome of a case? Are they detail oriented or are they 30,000 foot big picture CEOs that really don’t want to know why we’re suggesting they do something a certain way, but they want to hear what our opinion is?

What’s the bottom line? So depending on the personality of each party, what’s happening is when we craft our communications, our updates, our recommendations, the AI is helping us generate template emails or template text messages that we’re frankly copying and then pasting, and we’re eyeballing it and making sure it’s okay, but they’re crafted with the personality of our clients, of opposing Counsel, of a claims adjuster of a judge. It’s taking all of that into consideration. How much more time does this take with each and every template, 15, 20, maybe 30 seconds? It’s that fast. So once you set up your practice procedures in a way that allows you to personalize the experience for all of these different players that we see in our cases, what you’ll find is less friction, more cooperation, and in the end, better results.

JoAnn Hathaway:

So Mitch, what ethical and data privacy and security due diligence considerations should lawyers and law firms be aware of when utilizing AI and decision-making processes and also client representation?

Mitch Jackson:

Great question, and I think it’s IP rights, copyright privacy rights. That’s where we’re focusing our attention, not only when we’re counseling our clients. In fact, that is what we’re focusing on when we Counsel our clients in these spaces. But taking it full circle back to law firms, what should you look at as a law firm? Well, you want to be aware of all the above, right? What you’re sharing with the client, what you’re sharing in the different AI services, is it protected or is it being shared with third parties? For example, my wife, who’s my partner, we met in law school and we’ve been married and partners in our law firm ever since we went down. And for those of you that know me, I’m big time into the metaverse and spatial computing. I also think that’s changing the world, but we tried on the Apple Vision Pro down at the Apple store and played around with it.

It’s amazing technology, but what a lot of people don’t realize is everything you’re looking at in that headset, if you’re sitting at your desk with legal pleadings and confidential client communications on the left and over on the right, you’ve got your research, it may be a letter to a client advising them to settle a case. The way these headsets are set up is all of that content is being communicated to Apple, or if you’re using the Oculus Quest, the MedQuest two or the MedQuest Pro, it’s been shown that about 2 billion different data points are being shared every 20 minutes with the older version of the ME Quest two, and I’m guessing the Apple Vision Pro sharing much more information every 20 minutes. So you need to be aware of that. You need to be aware of what’s in your vision. You need to be aware of what you’re looking at, what you are manipulating, what you’re typing and writing within these services.

Because if you look at the Apple terms of service agreement, you’re going to see that you are agreeing by using their product to them being able to share data not only with Apple, but with their third party partners, with third party consultants globally. I’m not really sure what that means, but the takeaway is what we are doing in-House is before we share any of this information right now, even though we’re doing it behind Privacy Protective API Walls, we’re also redacting personal information. Right now, we’re just not leaving anything to chance. So medical record names, social security numbers, anything private that we wouldn’t normally disclose, we’re making sure that that’s not put into the system. I want everyone to just pay attention to the fact that if you are typing something into a chatbot, there’s an argument that can be made that you’re actually disclosing private information into a public company or into a public global, like I just mentioned with Apple Third Party Network, which purportedly is set up to help make your experience better.

But at the same time, if you are typing a trademark secret or trade secret into a prompt, the question is are you now disclosing it thereby waiving the privacy protection of that trademark protection or whatever the IP protection is? And so you want to be careful with the services that you’re using. You want to be careful what data you put into these systems. And we had a recent mediation along these lines where what you can do with some of these services, you can actually take a picture of a whiteboard, you can take a picture of a pleading of a discovery response and ask the AI to analyze everything about it. Every question that a lawyer can think of, you can ask it to analyze the accuracy of the equation, the appropriateness of the objection, whatever it may be. You just want to keep in mind that whether you are typing in content to an AI database, you’re visually looking through an AI headset, a virtual reality headset that incorporates ai, you’re taking pictures or uploading videos.

You want to make sure that you understand that there’s a potential that it’s being disclosed. So you want to make sure the platforms you’re using comply with Privacy Protective Steps that would be approved by your state bar, and that’s something we always do here in California as I’ll check with the state bar to see what they recommend. So it’s a huge issue that you need to be aware of. It’s a huge issue that clients can need to remind their clients about when using ai. But I also feel as though if you’re aware of these issues and you’re careful and use your due diligence when inputting content and when asking oral questions and sharing videos and photographs and things like this, once again, you can quickly circle back to benefits one and two, which makes your practice better, faster, more accurate, more cost effective, and in the end, a better client experience.

Molly Ranns:

Mitch, I have to tell you that as a mom who just bought her kids the new MedQuest, this is all very interesting to me.

Mitch Jackson:

Look, we do mediations and client meetings in different metaverse spaces, which are just a beautiful 10 out of 10 spaces. It’s the kind of space I want our clients to walk into or potential client, or if I’m mediating a case, and we’re still using the Oculus Quest two for everything we’re talking about, it works just fine for my purposes, but the Oculus Quest two happens to be the system that shares 2 billion data points every 20 minutes. The systems we’re using these things are three, four years old. I’m guessing the Apple Vision Pro is probably 10 x that, and that’s great for creating these amazing experiences, but it also opens the door for lawyers understanding and appreciating their rights, or if you’re a mom or dad of kids, what’s being shared and how is it being shared with third parties locally, nationally, and globally?

Molly Ranns:

Yeah, absolutely. It’s fascinating. Okay, we are now going to take a short break from our conversation with John Mitchell Jackson to thank our sponsors.

JoAnn Hathaway:

Welcome back. We are here with John Mitchell Jackson talking about how lawyers can enhance their legal services and stay ahead in the industry by using AI

Molly Ranns:

Mitch. How can lawyers effectively learn and adapt to using AI tools, ensuring a smooth transition in maximizing the technologies potential benefits

Mitch Jackson:

Potential? It’s interesting, right? Because we’re trained to be cautious, we’re trained to really think things through most of the time, overthink things before implementing them into our practice. The challenge with AI is speed is now a strategy. In other words, this is not an option. This isn’t something that may or may not be sticking around. It’s changing everything. AI is going to have a greater impact on the practice of law than electricity, the printing press, the internet. You combine all of these things together, and once you start playing around with ai, you’re going to understand what I’m talking about, and that’s where I’m going with this is you need to just jump in and test it locally from within your firm. Start playing around with different AI services and get a feel for how they work, whether you are using your keyboard to type in questions, whether you’re using pi, pi, ai to do a voice interaction with the service, whether you’re using chat GPT or OIDs product to do research with legal pleadings or case law, just play around with it on your own after hours and get a feel for what it does.

Because me trying to tell somebody how to leverage AI and all the benefits with ai for any of us to do this, it’s like trying to give somebody a haircut over the telephone. It’s impossible to do. And so what you want to do is you want to start just testing out these services, get a feel for what they can and can’t do. At the same time, you want to get everyone involved on your team at every level in your firm. You want to get everybody involved. Chat, GT 3.5. I believe as of this recording, it’s free and you can go in and once again, there are privacy issues, okay? You’re not behind an API that’s going to protect your data, but you can set these things up and let people just play around with them. What’s their favorite movie? What’s their favorite quote on this particular issue?

What’s the market going to do? What’s the latest paddleboard to buy next week? If you want to join me out on a paddle in Dana Point, play around with the service and get a feel for it. And you’ll quickly, within just a couple of days, wrap your head around what it can or can’t do. Talk with your team members about this. Talk to them about all of the pluses of ai, but also educate everybody on what they shouldn’t be doing. We’ve already talked about that, so everybody’s on the same page. If you’re a larger firm, you want to go ahead and incorporate into training materials, into human resources, all of the things that we’ve talked about so that everybody’s on the same page moving forward. I think that’s the best way to learn about ai. I think it’s the best way to get comfortable with how these things work, and it’s the best way to really position your firm for success moving forward, 1, 3, 5 years down the road.

JoAnn Hathaway:

So Mitch, how can AI be leveraged to improve access to justice for underserved populations or individuals with limited resources?

Mitch Jackson:

That’s a really good question. I’m hoping that it’s a game changer with all the above. Obviously, we need to improve access to justice. We need to bring down the cost of legal representation. What we’ve been doing and playing around with is creating chatbots, which there are different services out there that allow you to create your own chatbot. You can make it private, so you can use this internally, which we’re using with our clients and cases, or you can make them public chatbots, which you share the link and anybody can go in and ask a question. What I see happening are these chatbots being made public that focus on particular issues, whether it’s child custody cases, whether it’s whatever the issue may be, making these public free chatbots available to the consumer will really, I think, help open up the doors at the courthouse and allow everyone to instantly have access to answers to simple and complicated legal questions.

And I think what a lot of lawyers need to know who maybe haven’t played around with these services is if you’re accessing one of these chat bots, and maybe it’s a domestic violence case and you need help, not only can that chatbot instantly tell you what your rights are under that particular state’s laws, but it can also with a follow-up question right now, and it’s going to be 10 times better in a year and a hundred times better in two years. Right now, you can follow it up with prepare an application for protective order on the issue we’ve been talking about for the X, Y, Z courthouse in department C, and it will actually instantly create application for protective order or whatever the document may be that, for example, as a lawyer, when I look at these things and I copy and paste them, I’m blown away by how good they are, how accurate they are, and how effective they would be to somebody who’s in pro per and isn’t able to hire a lawyer.

It’s going to get them 80 or 90% of the way. So I think some things, ai, again, a friend of mine turned me on to pi, pi AI last week, and I’ve been playing around with it on my iPhone app, and you can ask it anything. Everything we’ve talked about, I could have asked this ai, what is this? How do you use it? How can I draft a document to protect myself in this situation? And it gives you an instant answer. Will it replace lawyers? I don’t know. Like I said, I think this type of technology is going to make our lives better. It’s going to help us deliver better legal solutions in a cost effective fashion. And I think for those individuals that are not able to hire Counsel, these tools will eventually give them access to justice. This just simply hasn’t been available up until the last couple of years.

Molly Ranns:

Alright, Mitch, I have to ask as we wrap up today, what trends do you foresee in the future of AI in the legal field and how can lawyers prepare to stay competitive and relevant in what seems to be a very rapidly evolving landscape?

Mitch Jackson:

Roll up your sleeves and start playing around with this technology. Like I mentioned, I will tell you that I think when you reduce the friction, the ease of use, that’s where this technology gets very, very powerful. So we all know the big legal service providers, whether it’s document production, whether it’s legal research, all of these companies are incorporating AI behind the scenes into their databases, and it’s just made life so much easier for me, AI that I’m able to share an image or simply almost dictate my question, ask my question using audio. That’s an eyeopener. It’s an eyeopener as to how powerful this technology is. Give you a real world example of something that I just did yesterday morning, is I use PI AI to help me set up some family plans for this upcoming Saturday night up in Los Angeles. I’m down in Orange County, California, and my Arizona Wildcat are playing the USC Trojans in basketball at the Galand Center.

So I asked this service, what are some good restaurants in the area that we can park at and be close enough where we can just walk over to the Galand Center to watch the game? It immediately shared those restaurants with me. I asked a couple of follow up questions and it was spot on because I double checked everything using Google on my desktop. What’s going to be happening within the next year is the following. Once it shares this information with me, I’ll be able to ask it, try to make reservations for 5:00 PM for four people at the XY, Z restaurant, confirm our tickets and seat numbers and text them to all of my family members between now and six o’clock this evening, whatever it may be. This technology here right now, I just haven’t taken the time to set it all up. When it comes to the practice of law, what we see happening is using blockchain technology, everything we talked about will be powered by ai.

Where what I see happening is on new cases, lawyers filing their actions digitally. Instantly, the AI using smart contracts on the blockchain will be completing service of process of the documents instantly opposing Counsel and clients will be digitally connected and at the option or stipulation of all parties, within 30 to 45 seconds, we’ll have an option. Do we want to settle this case? Yes or no? These AI database services will be then tapping into millions of similar cases, verdicts, results, settlements, venues, whatever the issues are. And depending on the agreement between Counsel, arguably getting the case settled within 60 or 90 seconds because everything that we’re doing can be quantified. It can be put into a large language model database or complimented by one, and depending on the agreement of parties, depending on the issues at hand, I think this type of technology will make it easier, better, and faster for lawyers to help clients resolve their issues.

When we reduce friction and we’re able to use voice, like I mentioned earlier, to do all the above, that’s where I think the game changes, at least for me. Some of the platforms that we’re playing around with and using every single day, and when I say playing around with what I’m saying is we’re using these every day because they work really well, is we’re using chat GT four. I’m using the audio version on my phone or on my desktop to do the things we’re talking about. We’re using perplexity ai, which then also includes links to the resources that it’s recommending or it’s suggesting or the solutions that it’s finding. So you can have your team do their due diligence to make sure what it’s sharing with you is accurate. We’re using logs copilot to research, write and summarize cases. We’re using Ed Walter’s VL to do research.

When I met Ed in Nashville during Clio, I walked over to his booth and he wanted me to kick the tires on his platform. I gave him one of the appellate cases, something to do with one of the appellate cases that we had the pleasure of helping make new law on here in the state of California. And his AI immediately found the case. His AI immediately summarized it correctly and analyzed it, and found a more recent case that actually improved upon the decision the appellate court made in the case that I handled. So I think between all of the above, lawyers that start spending a few minutes each day doing the things that we’ve talked about will be those lawyers that will have a successful, meaningful, and enjoyable practice moving forward over the next three to five years. Because things are happening quickly. The consumer is expecting us to be better, and I think AI will allow us to do all of the above.

JoAnn Hathaway:

Well, it does seem we’ve come to the end of our show. We’d like to thank our guest today, John Mitchell Jackson, for a wonderful program.

Molly Ranns:

If our listeners would like to follow up with you, Mitch, what’s the best way to reach you?

Mitch Jackson:

The best way is probably through my mediation blog website, which is Mitch jackson.com, and I think the two of you know I’m very active on LinkedIn and most of the other social platforms, but if everyone would like to connect with me on LinkedIn, that would be fantastic. I do have a weekly LinkedIn newsletter where I share, frankly, everything we just talked about. When something new comes along or if we figure out a new way to use an existing AI Web3 or spatial computing service, I’ll do a LinkedIn newsletter article about that, and that newsletter can also be accessed via LinkedIn. So thanks for having me on, and I’m looking forward to enjoying this exciting ride with you and everyone else moving forward. We’re in for an exciting time.

Molly Ranns:

Thanks again, Mitch. This has been another edition of the State Bar of Michigan On Balance Podcast.

JoAnn Hathaway:

I’m JoAnn Hathaway.

Molly Ranns:

And I’m Molly Ranns. Until next time, thank you for listening.

Speaker 4:

Thank you for listening to the State Bar of Michigan On Balance Podcast, brought to you by the State Bar of Michigan, and produced by the broadcast professionals at Legal Talk Network. If you’d like more information about today’s show, please visit legal talk network.com, subscribe via Apple Podcasts and RSS, find the State Bar of Michigan and Legal Talk Network on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or download Legal Talk Network’s, free app in Google Play and iTunes. The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network or the State Bar of Michigan or their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.