Legal Innovators California '24: the Premier Legal Technology and Innovation Event

Where I recount my trip to San Francisco to speak at Legal Innovators California '24

Thanks again to all my loyal readers! I am truly grateful. 🙏

And to you newbies, I think you’re gonna get a kick out of this one! 🥾

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When I posted last month about my trip to FutureLaw’24 in Tallinn, Estonia, I asked whether you all would like me to post about future legal technology events I attend. 83% of you said ‘Yes!’ So… you ask, and I deliver! 😁

Well, my next stop was Legal Innovators California (just wrapped up yesterday) where I was invited to pitch and LawDroid participated as a sponsor in the Start-up Gallery. The conference was hosted in San Francisco and, although I’ve been there many times, the beautiful city by the bay always seems to have a surprise for me. And, this time was no exception.

If this sounds interesting to you, please read on…

Inciting Incident

Before I arrived in San Francisco, I was in Los Angeles. My cousin’s husband had passed away and I was in town for his celebration of life. It was a beautiful and heart-warming event and I enjoyed seeing my cousins and sharing our memories of him. I was thinking of all of this as I was getting dropped off at LAX by my rental car shuttle.¹

The driver handed me my bag, but there was something about it that seemed off. I turned it around and noticed that it was missing the Swiss gear emblem, shaped like a square, red button, on its front. The bag in my hands was an American Tourister, a silver bag, but not my bag². I searched the racks. No such luck. Panic. The driver gave my bag away to another guest he had dropped off before me.

The driver whipped the shuttle back around to the terminal where the prior guest had been dropped off. I sprinted across and searched the concourse for this mystery man who had my bag. To make a long story somewhat short: I didn’t find him. And, after sweating it and stressing it, I only had 20 minutes to get to my terminal and make my flight. I had to make sure, at the very least, not to miss my plane.

So, I just chalked it up to the universe, put my AirPods in and turned on, tuned in and dropped out as my plane took off, having no friggin’ idea how things would work out.

A bit like life, no?

The Founder

Richard Tromans is the owner and author of Artificial Lawyer, the premiere source of legal innovation news and analysis. Richard has an indefatigable spirit and is a prolific writer and thinker about all things legal innovation. If you don’t already follow him, I highly recommend it, for your benefit.

The Legal Innovators conferences, created by Artificial Lawyer and organized by Cosmonauts³, were originally hosted in London, but also now take place in San Francisco for the last 3 years. I have attended both multiple times and the conferences are really top notch in terms of quality, attendance and networking. The content is split into two-days: the first focused on private practice lawyers and the second day devoted to in house counsel.

I also feel fortunate to call Richard a friend. We both started our forays into legal innovation about the same time. We're a couple of old punks at heart, driven by a shared passion for shaking things up and making a difference in the legal world.

Hanging with Richard

The Venue

The venue for Legal Innovators California was the beautiful Contemporary Jewish Museum on Mission Street in the heart of downtown San Francisco.

Legal Innovators California at the Contemporary Jewish Museum

✨ Day 1 Highlights! ✨

Day one offered a feast of thought-provoking insights on AI and its impact on lawyers in private practice. Here’s a highlight reel:

⭐️Richard Opens Day 1⭐️

⭐️Keynote by David Wang of Wilson Sonsini⭐️

David Wang is the Chief Innovation Officer at Wilson Sonsini.

- David is on my ‘watch and learn’ list. He has a great command of the subject and is very engaging. He’s also a fellow Canadian 🇨🇦 and student of philosophy.
- David’s opening question: “Why are we talking about playing with AI?” This theme mirrored that of the panel I led in Tallinn - that the honeymoon period of AI magic is over and our focus now should turn to the practical applications and implications of AI.
- He shared how Wilson Sonsini is using AI agents.
- David suggested a way for us to evaluate AI’s efficacy beyond mere play. Let’s start with first principles. He proposed the formula: Value = Efficiency x Quality
- Efficiency is somewhat easier to assess, but quality is key. How do we determine it?

- Evaluation is the frontier for applied AI. If eval wasn't the hottest topic in legal AI already, it sure is now after the HAI study⁴. 🤔
- Value is derived when you can understand and own the quality of what is delivered. Only then does efficiency come into play.
- David’s closing tagline: “The time to play around is over; it’s time to get to work!”

⭐️Harnessing the Power of Generative AI in Legal Practice⭐️

- Sam Moore of Skillburst Interactive skillfully moderated this brainy panel.
- John LaBarre of Harvey noted the parallels between the present day and the rise of the Internet: “We’re living in 1997”
- Steve Gong of Google observed that, with the use of generative AI, “the line between what in house and outside counsel do is blurring.”
- John Scrudato of Latham & Watkins pointed out that what he calls AI-generated “proto” work product with citations creates an unwelcome problem set: verification.
- Amber O’Meara of Minter Ellison coined what I think is the most memorable catch phrase of the conference, emphasizing that at Minter Ellison, they “use AI to eliminate the pain and the mundane.” I got to talk to Amber later and she is a delightful person.

⭐️Inspiring Change: How Pro Bono Projects Get Invested in AI⭐️

Jacqueline Schafer is the Founder and CEO of Clearbrief.ai.

- Jackie shared her experience working on pro bono projects with Microsoft.
- Clearbrief is used to analyze large volumes of documents to improve efficiency and accuracy in their review and Microsoft Copilot is used to synthesize the information.
- Extract summaries from documents to create hyperlinked timelines plus much more with Clearbrief’s battle-tested AI platform.
- Pro Bono can accelerate associate’s acquisition of experience and knowledge of AI.
- I am a big fan of Jackie. Her approach is always pragmatic and results oriented. Clearbrief won Startup of the Year at the 2021 American Legal Technology Awards.

Interlude

Yay! I got my bags back 🙌. Thanks Fox Rent a Car for making things right.

Tom reunited with his bags

🤖 Pitch: AI Agents! 🤖

I am the CEO and Founder of LawDroid.
- Rather than pitch LawDroid per se, I used the opportunity to educate the crowd about AI agents. How are they different than chatbots? What value do they unlock?
- AI agents are the result of combining intelligence, knowledge, tools and goals.
- I shared that AI agents, unlike brittle chatbots, are robust, allowing them to autonomously take on more sophisticated jobs.
- To demonstrate their capability, I shared a short video of an AI agent I had tasked with selling tickets to a Depeche Mode concert.
- AI agents are scalable and self-guided, they are highly cost effective.
- Oh, and by the way, LawDroid offers an intuitive and easy to use interface for creating AI agents. We’re like Canva for AI.
- Here’s a video of my presentation slides:

✨ Day 2 Highlights! ✨

Day two was packed with insightful sessions on AI and its impact on in house counsel. Here’s a highlight reel:

⭐️Keynote by Zach Abramowitz of Killer Whale Strategies⭐️

Zach Abramowitz is the Founder of Killer Whale Strategies.

- Zach is another one on my ‘watch and learn’ list. He is so knowledgeable and really grabs your interest with his enthusiasm and sense of humor.
- AI is now creating real ROI
- Smaller, more nimble companies are planning to keep more cash and have more impact by leveraging AI. Larger companies play it safe at their peril.
- A cautionary tale: a company gets an AI legal tool and referrals to outside counsel get reduced by 50%. For example, legal research now done internally with AI tool.
- Remove red tape. De-risking may be hurting you more than helping you.

⭐️A Year Later: Is Generative AI Transforming In-House Legal?⭐️

- Keeping up with the changing landscape if AI is difficult
- A big win has been in using GenAI to reduce contract review lifecycle and increase income realization rates
- A popular use case has been employing a chatbot to answer frequently asked questions for information that is low risk but highly in demand
- Top-down encouragement of GenAI use has greatly incentivized its use
- GenAI helps to reduce meticulous and mundane tasks

⭐️Legal Ops in the Era of In-House Innovation⭐️

- Legal now gets to be a business partner with the company because LLMs help to minimize legal’s perception as a ‘cost center’
- Lawyers are getting the “what’s in it for me” and adopting AI enthusiastically
- None of this technological change would be possible without a cultural strategy
- Use cases: condensing contracts, pinpointing provisions, increasing deal velocity, spot compliance issues, translating lawyer’s billing descriptions
- Real case study: Microsoft Copilot empowered lawyers to perform their tasks 30% faster with 20% increase in quality

⭐️Richard Closes Day 2⭐️

- Richard shared his initial skepticism of GenAI and whether it could provide real value in light of its current challenges with accuracy
- He figured that he would hear what people in the trenches, in the heart of the innovation community in San Francisco, had to say and then render his verdict
- Richard’s verdict: GenAI is the real deal!

Kudos to Richard and the Legal Innovators team on another successful event!! 🤩

Thank you for everything Legal Innovators California’24! Hope to see you next year. 👋

A Taste of San Francisco

San Francisco is hard to beat when the weather is willing and, I have to say, we had a lucky couple of gorgeous sunny days.

A short video from my trip to Sausalito:

And here are some pics:

A Smattering of Sausalito

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1. One of my first jobs was working in the movie business. I started as an intern at Jon Peters’ production company based on the Warner Brothers lot in Jack Warner’s old bungalow. One of the first things you learn as an intern at a movie company is writing ‘coverage.’ Coverage is essentially a report you produce after you read and analyze a script so your boss doesn’t have to read it all herself. You learn a lot about story structure and one of the first things that happens in a story is the ‘inciting incident.’ That’s when the main character’s humdrum life takes an unexpected turn. Well that’s what happened to me.

2. If you’re curious, my missing bag included all my LawDroid vendor stuff for the conference: computer monitor, monitor arm, handouts, business cards, mug and many, many LawDroid-branded pens - because people love pens, and free pens even more.

3. Timo Karakashev is the CEO of Cosmonauts.

4. Varun Magesh et al., Hallucination-Free? Assessing the Reliability of Leading AI Legal Research Tools, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, https://dho.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/Legal_RAG_Hallucinations.pdf.