The Human In The Machine, “Natural” VS. “Artificial” Intelligence

Episode Notes

Transcript

Speaker 1:

Managing your law practice can be challenging, marketing, time management, attracting clients, and all the things besides the cases that you need to do that aren’t billable. Welcome to this edition of the Un-Billable Hour, the Law Practice Advisory podcast. This is where you’ll get the information you need from expert guests and host Christopher Anderson here on Legal Talk Network.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Welcome to the Unbillable Hour. I am your host, Christopher Anderson, and today’s episode is about production, but specifically about technology and even more specifically about how technology and production are evermore in alter and alienable intertwined. Now, we’ve gotten all the four syllable words out of the way, taking a moment here because it’s a good time for law firm owners and directors to reflect on their choices on how to adopt and how to implement technology to deliver great value to their clients. And not ever for technology’s sake. It is got to be with that focus of what is the value that we’re adding either to our team, to the owners or to the clients, and to then use that to leverage the capabilities of your awesome team to deliver more. And to do this, we’re going to be speaking today with Joey Seeber. We’re going to talk to him about maintaining a human focused approach while implementing new technologies for our clients.

As a reminder, in the main triangle of what it is that a law firm business must do, we’ve got to acquire new clients. And the second thing that we must do is produce the results that we promised. That’s what we’re talking about today, and it’s really important. Sometimes a little less sexy, but really at the end of the day, more important because that’s where we drive value. And value is what brings dollars to the firm. And then finally, achieving the business and professional results for the owners because it is you at the center of the triangle that is driving it all. For better or worse, it is you. And this is all about the choices that you will make for your firm. So we’re going to discuss how to better leverage technology for our clients with a whole lot of human touch. And once again, our guest today is Joey Seeber.

He is the CEO of level legal, and today’s episode is called The Human in the Machine Natural Intelligence. There’s a quick intro and you know how awesome I am at the intros. Joey Seeber is the CEO of Level Legal. He came to this place as formerly, well, I guess it’s not a formerly experienced litigator. The experience doesn’t go away, at least not for a few more years. But as an experienced litigator, a successful entrepreneur, and also served as an elected official, as a lawyer, he really worked on the ins and outs of the profession, but also particularly about Litigation related discovery matters, trying cases before jury and using technology to help him do those things. While doing all that, he was also a mayor for three terms in Tyler, Texas and Level Legal was his brainchild founded in 2009. Level Legal is based in Dallas. It’s dedicated to making legal human through forensics, e-discovery, managed review for law firms and in-house legal departments. Joey, welcome to The. Un-Billable Hour.

Joey Seeber:

Thank you. That’s a great introduction. I’m going to make sure and play it back for my mother. She’ll be very impressed

Christopher T. Anderson:

You do that. You know what? Do not plate it back for your mother. You make her listen to the show.

Joey Seeber:

There you go. Well, that’s right. That’s what I meant. Yes. I’ll send her the link.

Christopher T. Anderson:

I don’t know if anybody is a fan of Seinfeld, but there’s a little bit of yada yada yada here. So Joey was a litigator, yada, yada, yada level legal. So tell us a little bit about how you came to decide that building this platform, building level legal was your calling.

Joey Seeber:

That’s a great question and again, thank you for you for having me today. I’m not going to claim almost now almost 15 years ago, I’m not going to claim that there was tremendous foresight because some of the vision emerged after we took advantage of what was the opportunity at the time there was, to be perfectly candid, it was just an opportunity that we saw in the market. Remember now we’re talking about 15 years ago before we had the iPhone. Before that we had a lot of things that we use every day, but the opportunity at the time was documents were digital. When I started practicing law in 1990, some of the first tasks were go through this banker’s box of documents. Nineties to early two thousands, everything became digital for a while. There was no unspoken or unrecorded thought and all of those messages, all of those emails before people kind of understood about good email hygiene were recorded and were discoverable and were used.

And so with the huge increase in the volume of potentially discoverable documents came a huge increase in the cost for lawyers and law firms to comply with discovery requirements. And so there became an opportunity for what has become known as an alternative legal provider. And that’s where we had that idea about the same time others had that idea, okay, there’s a market here particularly in discovery for somebody that knows what they’re doing and can do it well. We had background as lawyers, practicing lawyers, but we knew what lawyers were looking for and we entered the market then.

Christopher T. Anderson:

And like you said, that’s 15 years ago and it isn’t like, oh, this big change happened 15 years ago and digital became part of what was discoverable and glad that’s over. Things have continued to change and I would venture to guess that the volume of material that’s discoverable has increased it. I’d almost guess it’s been an exponential rate.

Joey Seeber:

Yeah, it’s been an exponential rate. So that tools have gotten much, well, let’s say that there are now tools for some of these things. Those tools have improved. We’ve been using some form of AI in discovery for a decade,

Christopher T. Anderson:

Right? Right. Yeah. Everybody thinks it’s like it happened, AI just happened last year. It wasn’t exist before that.

Joey Seeber:

So the numbers of documents or the amount of data, huge increases. We can, let’s call it exponential tools, much better at eliminating, reducing, culling, all of the things we do to reduce the data set size. There is still today a huge number of documents that then, well, that process is important, and then there are a huge number of documents that need eyes on review or some type of handling that involves human. And so it’s at all steps in that process where we are involved.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Okay, cool. Let’s kind of take that clock and wind it forward. As you mentioned, 15 years, which if you read Kurtzweil every 10 years, it covers as much as the previous 30 or 40. And so what happened in the first 10 years of those 15 years probably has happened maybe twice in the second five years. In the five years since. So can you discuss a little bit what you’re seeing as some of the critical changes in the legal services and in the services that you’re able to provide?

Joey Seeber:

Yes. Look, my answer’s not sexy. It’s very basic. I think what you’re talking about are kind of basic concepts that change as the technologists improve or as we get more advanced. Look in the last 15 years, again, it’s just a good way to think about it is, I mean, we still have flip phones and

Christopher T. Anderson:

Hey man, I was toting myself one nice palm trio by,

Joey Seeber:

I held onto my Blackberry until it died, and that was only about five years ago, so I was late. I know, I know, I know. But look what has happened in our industry. Several things come to top of mind. First of all, there is not only an acceptance of technology, there’s an expectation of using technology. There’s an acceptance and if not an expectation of the use of cloud-based tools. Now that was really, really out there, really risky, really like, oh, my data’s got to be somewhere else,

Christopher T. Anderson:

Right? Right.

Joey Seeber:

There’s acceptance of alternative providers. I mentioned that earlier, that the expectation is going to be for this large volume for a lot of time, for all of these documents may be somebody that is an alternative provider. I don’t have to pay my law firm to do this. There’s an acceptance of remote work that we have, the technology, we have the security technology, we have the acceptance that we didn’t lose the case because people were working from their homes or working remotely. The worst disaster didn’t happen. We actually could have systems, processes, people, technology that will take care of all of the concerns and it can be more efficient and sometimes we can get better people because we can work remotely. So I think those things have changed. Obviously the technology has improved, but technology has been kind of a leveling,

Christopher T. Anderson:

Not to make a pun with your firm name, but Yeah,

Joey Seeber:

No, well actually I didn’t even recognize I did. But there has been a leveling with technology because look, let’s face it, every, I’ll just use e-discovery provider, I mean e discovery tool. They all have a similar interface. They all have slightly different strengths, but most of ’em are doing the same types of things. Those are the kinds of things that need to be done. And so there’s a leveling there. What we find is the difference is not as much in the tool as it is with who’s using the tool. And that’s where we get to level legal as you would expect me to do. That’s where the human side comes in,

Christopher T. Anderson:

Which is a great segue to what I wanted to follow up with you. So that’s exactly it. I teased that at the beginning of the show that it’s about large dose of the human touch. So what does that mean in this context? So like you said, I hesitate to use the word commoditization, but in a sense, like you said, the tools are the tools. The leveling is certainly, at least in as much as all those tools are available to everybody. And like I said, some tools are better at some things, some tools are better at other things. You can spend a lot on them, you can spend less on them. But you said it’s the human interface and the human behind the technology that matters. What do you mean by that and how do we make sure to keep that as part of our firms utilization of these tools?

Joey Seeber:

No matter the technology, we have a human. When you’re engaging with a first service, a human service professional service, you are a human on one end and there’s a human on the other end. I may work for level legal, I may work for a law firm, I work for a corporation, but whoever, whoever’s on the ends of that service are humans. I’m a human serving a human. I’m a human at level legal, serving a human at whatever company, corporation or firm or lawyer I’m working for. And when we can remind ourselves and remind our customer, I’m going to use that word that we’re a human serving a human, we’ve reinforced the thing that we have in common, the technology helps us get there. Did you happen to use QuickBooks way back when you had to load the disc? I did back in the nineties. Been

Christopher T. Anderson:

Using that. Could use QuickBooks longer than that. Yeah,

Joey Seeber:

Yeah. Okay. So the whole point of QuickBooks was to make accounting available and you could do it yourself and we’re going to help you do it. There are now entire industries who are built around helping people use QuickBooks, the do it yourself.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Okay. Right.

Joey Seeber:

What does that tell us? That even with a do it yourself, even with a great technology, even with a great tool, you’ve got to have humans who know how to use it and how to use it best. And even beyond that, how to create delight. Yes, I’m using that word delight in providing that service. That’s where the difference is. I am a little contrarian in the it’s concept that the AI is going to ruin everything and all of our jobs are going away. What I think is that AI is going to be ubiquitous. AI is going to be a feature in all of the tools that we use and that the difference is going to be in the human. Who is using it, who’s creating the prompt, what are we asking of it, and then how are we delivering it? Are we delivering in a way that creates delight for the customer, for the client? That is where the real difference is going to be in the next five years, the next decade as we see technology used more and more for many of the things that we’re not using for even now.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Absolutely. And so when we come back, because we’re going to hear from our sponsors here for a second, because this show is made possible by some wonderful businesses that quite honestly help with some of the things we’re talking about. And when we come back, we’re going to continue that thought as that human to human contact and get a little pragmatic. So I want to talk to you when we get back about how do we build teams of humans to make sure we’re maintaining that human focus in the communication with our customers? To use the word that you used, but first we’ll hear this word and then we’ll be back in just a sec. We’re back. I’m talking with Joey Seeber. Joey is the CEO of level legal. And so far in the beginning of the show we’ve been talking about the theory, the concepts of the human touch in using technology and the fact that all technology at the end of the day still results in a human to human contact. And what we said we’d do after the break. So what I’d like to ask you now, Joey, is to discuss, all right, so human touch is important, and Joey Seeber is CEO. He’s a human, and so he can do a good job, but as we build firms and legal departments and we use these tools, how do we assemble, put together a team that remains human focused?

Joey Seeber:

I think it starts with funny enough, what are your human values? What is it that you value? What is your distinctive, what is your mission? Those are all slightly different things. What I can tell you is that that level legal, our mission is to surprise with remarkable delight. What? Where’s the word law? Where’s the word legal? Where’s the word document? Where’s the word discovery?

Christopher T. Anderson:

I saw that on your website. I was curious about that.

Joey Seeber:

To surprise with remarkable delight. That is the mission. So if we’ve only done the things that check the boxes that get us paid, we’ve not accomplished our mission. Okay. Why are you talking about mission when we’re talking about how do we find people that can deliver a human focused approach? Because you have to know what’s important to you. And so if I want to surprise or delight somebody, that’s something that a human can do for a human. And so if that’s your mission, that’s what you’re trying to do, then you’re looking for people that can help you accomplish that mission. So we’d like to say that we are a hospitality company that happens to be in the legal business. We’re looking to delight. Yes. Even in legal, we’re looking to delight. So what does that mean? We’re looking for human skills. We’re looking for the ability to communicate.

We’re looking for the ability to anticipate. We’re looking for some bit of EQ in the people that we are recruiting and that we are hiring and training good communication skills for the people, not just somebody as important as it is who can make the technology work or keep the technology working, but then how do you translate that proficiency into delight for whoever it is that we’re serving and we call ’em customers. So those are the ways that we are building the humans on the team who can deliver delight and implement the technologies. Again, I don’t mean to ignore the technology. They talked technologies are really important, but they’re available to all of us.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Right.

Joey Seeber:

I saw an interesting tweet yesterday and it said, would you rather have a lawyer who is competent and super responsive or brilliant and slow to respond? I think most people would choose the former. I want to know that the job’s getting done and I want to know that you are serving me the way I need to be served quickly. There’s a sense of urgency and we’re moving forward.

Christopher T. Anderson:

And so to that point though, what tips, pointers, suggestions do you have for our listeners for recruiting for that purpose? So I imagine you probably recruit for those soft skills rather than, or not rather than, but maybe with some higher priority than others might as compared to the hard skills. How would you recommend the people listening would or should change the way they recruit to get team members that are more focused on delighting the customer?

Joey Seeber:

It’s funny because we were having a conversation internally just yesterday about this so that we can tweak and become even better very quickly. One of the things we do is we start with not just a job description, but a role description, A role description. How am I going to measure you when you get here? What are the expectations? Very specifically even quantitative when you come so that I know what I am looking for in the person and I can communicate that to them. After we have that, then we build a profile for that position, and we use a tool called the culture index. And the culture index is similar to other tools that have been used through the years. It’s largely a personality test, but it is a personality test on steroids that gives you the results in a statistical manner so that you can see on the bell curve where people fall in various traits.

So we’re building the ideal profile based upon a survey, and then we’re measuring candidates based upon that. That gives us one indication. Then we have a list of behaviors and traits that we look for in a service business like ours that we have discovered over time are those kinds of things that will help deliver delight. One of the things, I’ll just pick one, we call the excellence reflex. Are you anticipating what a customer client needs and executing acting upon that before they have to ask you? So we’re looking for examples in someone’s history of oftentimes people who’ve been in service industries, who’ve been in hospitality, who may have waited tables or manage a restaurant

Christopher T. Anderson:

Is the reference that came to my mind

Joey Seeber:

Or work in a hotel. Often those are people who are able to score highly in that area.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. When you said that anticipate that was the thought. I was like, it’s the bartender who has the drink in front of you before you order it. It’s the waiter who brings the fork that you dropped before you asked, right. Or whatever it might be. Yeah, that’s a great example. Ritz Carlton service, they really train their people for that.

Joey Seeber:

We use Ritz Carlton as an example. We use Four Seasons as an example. We use Nordstrom as an example. Yes, yes. I had an employee recently. I was onboarding her as I do every employee, just to have an initial conversation and talk about these very things. And I was talking about delight. How do you identify delight? Because it’s a little ethereal and the way I talk about it is it’s something that puts a smile on somebody’s face. And she had an amazing example. She said, I’ll give you an example. I was traveling in a foreign country and we had a wonderful meal at a restaurant, and it was so good that I wanted to take the leftovers from the meal with me so that I could enjoy them again the next day. And it was Italian restaurant. So we had the little container and we were taking the food away and we were walking away from the restaurant and the chef, the chef came running after me with a loaf of bread and we turned around and was a bit startled, what is this man carrying a loaf of bread? And he said, you cannot eat that without bread. You must have the bread. That’s delight. He knew that that meal, even leftovers consumed the next day was going to need that loaf of bread so that they could enjoy that meal. That’s delight.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Absolutely. When we come back, I want to shift the conversation now. We’ve talked about matching team to bring delight. I want to talk a little bit about making sure we’re pairing the right technology with the needs. And I do want to leave a little bit of time since you mentioned at the beginning and everybody likes to talk about it, how AI is a player in this. And mostly I like to talk about that to bring it back down to earth because I think a lot of people think of AI as sort of this ethereal thing that is going to change everything. And I think you’ve got a good take on that. But first a word from our sponsors then we’ll back in just a minute, and we are back once again with Joey Siber. He is the CEO of level legal, and we’ve been talking about delight in delivering technology solutions to leverage your team now pairing the right technology with the customer’s needs.

And what’s cool about what Joey said at the beginning, it’s very simpatico with the way that I see technology and the way I encourage everybody listening to see technology, to be quite honest, is a Joey called it a tool. It is a tool. It is a hammer, it is a screwdriver, it is an iPhone, it is whatever. It’s a tape recorder. All these are technologies. They are tools to enable us to leverage our skills and our team skills and abilities and deliver more value to our clients. But using the wrong tool can really get in the way. So Joey, could you talk a little bit about pairing how your team, how you see pairing the right technology with the customer’s needs, goals, what processes do you use to make sure that that’s done?

Joey Seeber:

Yeah, again, it’s a very simple answer and that is you’re asking about client goals from the very beginning and it’s like, okay, but that is so freaking basic, Joey, why are you saying that? Because so often it gets skipped. Think about when you have a client that is a repetitive client on lots of different types of matters or lots of different matters. We all have the tendency to work in patterns. And so the pattern is, well, I did this on the last one, I’m going to do it on this one. It’s really important on every single matter to take 10, 15 minutes to talk about client goals, client expectations, what are you hoping to accomplish? What is unique about this matter? And then do an analysis of the tools available. Sometimes one size does not fit all, and something very simple could be used or something more complex needs to be used.

Or there are different tools or strategies or ways to use the tools, tools that are different depending upon the complexity of the matter. You particularly get into this with different data types, data sources, custodians, and you want to begin with the ended mind. How are these going to be used not just for production, but is there likely to be a trial? We’ll be using these at trial, and if that’s the case, then where that data is stored, how it is reviewed, all those things become important. So how do you do that? You have a conversation in the beginning about what the goals are so that you can make sure that you’re fitting the right technology, the right tool, the right level of effort from the humans that meets the expectations of your client or customer.

Christopher T. Anderson:

You’re right, and it is basic as can be, but

Joey Seeber:

We all miss it,

Christopher T. Anderson:

But we all miss it, right? And it’s been definitely a theme in some of my businesses too, is like, you got to put that first. If you don’t understand the destination, how can you start your journey? We’ve talked a lot of theory about hiring. We talked a lot of theory about technology as a tool and a human interface, and now even about pairing technology with goals. Can you bring this down to earth for us in a way? Just talk about a use case or two. How does this play out with some of your clients? Give us an example.

Joey Seeber:

Just a real quick example. We had the good fortune to work with a international, very large international law firm on a project, and we worked with a particular woman, a particular lawyer, particular lawyer there, but she was not in a decision-making capacity for another matter where we were ultimately retained. And when she saw that we were retained, she sent an email and said, I want you to know how happy I am that this new client chose to use you, make my professional life easier and better when we get to work with you. Well, why is that? First of all, that’s the ultimate compliment for somebody who’s in many people viewed as a vendor, alternative provider, you make my professional life better. I can’t imagine a better compliment, but we had been particularly attentive. She was really engaged on that first matter. We were attentive to the way that she wanted to receive her reports to when she wanted to receive a reports, what information was important to her, trying to deliver that delight and give her peace of mind in the work that we did. And we had succeeded in a way where she thought, wow, my life gets a little better every time we get to work together. So I think when you’re paying, the point is when you’re paying attention to those details, when you’re paying attention to that human to human connection, then it will pay off.

Christopher T. Anderson:

I don’t think there’s a person listening that wouldn’t like to have that said about their firm. Some of these techniques that we talked about can help with that. Alright, let’s turn to the question that I think is a great place to wrap the show. ai, like we talked about earlier, everybody, everybody, a lot of people feel like it’s sort of burst on the scenes with GPT chat, GPT last year and generative ai, but AI’s been around, and particularly in some of the stuff where you’re playing in eDiscovery and file review, it’s been around machine-based learning. Some people have called it, which is some ways similar. It’s the same, some ways different. But going forward, do you feel like the smaller and mid-sized firms can compete with big law when it comes to ai? Or are there limited resources going to kind of hand the game to big law?

Joey Seeber:

Partly it depends upon time horizon. The short answer to you is no, I don’t think outward a disadvantage. First of all, there’s not general acceptance of the newest version of the generative ai. There’s not general acceptance or application in the law. In fact, most of the examples we hear are disasters that have happened when people have overused it. Second of all, there’s no magic bullet out there yet. There’s not the killer app that’s out there yet. There’s still people who are experimenting, who are using, they’re definitely making advances. My advice is the same. We’re a small company, relatively small company in our industry. My advice is the same advice I give to ourselves internally. Don’t panic. Don’t panic about this. There’s no reason to panic. There’s not a silver bullet. There’s not general acceptance. We’re still early. What you can do is scan the horizon, make sure that you’re always looking, listening, reading, scan the horizon for tools.

What’s going to happen here is exactly what happens in every other great technology, which this is and will be. And that is that there will be some great products, some great discoveries, some great use cases, and they will very quickly be incorporated in the other tools that we are using. And it will be a feature of the suite of tools We’re already using any eDiscovery. It will be in Relativity or the other tools. You’re already seeing pieces of it in the Microsoft suite of tools, in the Google suite of tools you’re already beginning to see it as. And those things improve. The big players are going to integrate those. They’re going to buy those companies, they’re going to buy those products, they’re going to integrate it into their features. And in the meantime, if you’re paying attention, I don’t think you’re going to lose ground. That’s my own take. I could be wrong, but that’s my take and that’s how we’re planning our business.

Christopher T. Anderson:

So the takeaway folks is pay attention. And our guest today has been Douglas Adams, the author of Catch Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, who says, don’t panic. No, this does wrap up the addition of The, Un-Billable Hour. I want to thank our listeners for sticking with us. Our guest today is not Douglas Adams. Our guest today has been Joey Seeber. He is the CEO of level legal. Joey, we just touched on a lot of different things here today. If people want to learn more about you, your company, or just some of the topics we’ve talked about, how can they get in touch with you?

Joey Seeber:

I am Joey Seeber, J-S-E-E-B-E-R at Level Legal and of course, level legal.com is our website. Happy to interact with anybody that would like to carry the discussion further.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Excellent. Thanks so much, Joey. And of course, I am Christopher, T Anderson, and I look forward to being with all of you next month with another great guest as we learn more about the topics that help us build the law firm business that works for you. Remember, you can subscribe to all the additions of this [email protected] or on iTunes. And don’t forget, you can also be part of the show every third Thursday at three. The Unbillable Hour is live. We’re live here on the Legal Talk Network, and you can join by Zoom. You can register right here on Legal Talk network.com. Join by Zoom and ask your questions of me and other guests that we invite. Again, always the third, Thursdays at three, and always available on legal talk network.com or on iTunes. Thanks so much for joining us. We will speak again soon.

Speaker 1:

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