Transcript
Speaker: We increasingly what's valuable is not the information. In fact, the information is becoming commodity. In fact, it's so commodity that it it sort of clothes itself and reproduces itself and using mathematical ratio. So creation of the information, extraction of the information cannot be the competitive advantage that you have in and the marketplace in the world. That is to say, we shouldn't be competing with AI on information alone.
Speaker: But what's harder is this curation of the information, managing the focus, your focus, focus of your recipient. And then ultimately, this thing called impact and communication and changing lives, touching hearts, making sure that what you say is a signal, not noise.
Speaker: Hi, everyone. This is Akshay Verma. I am the COO at Spot Draft and also the host of our podcast, ah Spot Draft Beacon Voices. Excited to have a conversation today with a legend in the legal and legal technology profession, Olga Mack.
Speaker: who is currently the CEO of a great company called Term Scout, also in the contracting space, has had a prolific career so far as a lawyer, in house, in legal technology. We're going to talk about a lot of those things up front.
Speaker: um The main area of our conversation today, though, is a great book that she has co-written with a few other people. called Visual Literacy for Lawyers, a guide to enhancing your contracts and practice. And we're going to talk about what that means. We're going to talk about why they thought it was important to write. We're going to talk about what Olga specifically thinks it means for our profession, for contracting, for AI, and in the age of AI.
Speaker: But before we get to all that, Olga, welcome to the podcast. Oh, hello, Akshay. It's so exciting to have this conversation that with you. I'm really looking forward to it. Yeah, likewise, likewise. Well, look, before we dig into the book, um I do want to hear a little bit about the early part of your career. I have a very kind of specific journey of why I left the practice of law and have been doing what I've been doing for the last 14 years now.
Speaker: But would love to hear a little bit about you. You have been in the contracting space for a good portion of your career. And this new book about visual literacy brings a new aspect to that, which is visual design and visual aesthetics to something that most people, including lawyers, would probably view as very ah mundane, which is words on paper in a contract or on the screen. Now we all live on screens now.
Speaker: Why was it so important to write this book? Yeah, that's a really good question. There's a couple of things. um You know, this book actually has been a journey and a really long journey, probably the longest journey for this for this book to come to to real life.
Speaker: And I came at it through a couple of lens. One is that I do think that words on paper are not created equal.
Speaker: Some are just more inviting to read yeah and conducive to comprehension than others. And remember, in before we immigrated, I did plan to become an artist. I do have seven years of art training.
Speaker: I'm probably one of the more visually... ahff fluent lawyers you're gonna meet because of the formal training. And the plan was to to be a commercial artist.
Speaker: um That's why i did the immigration was so disappointing is because i couldn't graduate from eighth grade and pursue my vacation. i was able to convince my parents to do that. Instead, I moved to the country that required me to complete 12 grades. And why not take science and math where I don't have to speak English and it's easier to do well. wow So hence the reason of of a slightly different journey.
Speaker: ah In the process, yes, explored engineering and yes, ended up in law school. So, and I understand that we're visual creatures. I i joe i i love with my eyes. That's what I tell the world. I notice how people stand, what they look like, how they present.
Speaker: before they open their mouths, yeah before I see their words. I don't need to see how they contract to know how good of a lawyer they are. well I can just kind of tell the way they show up. yeah And then from there forward, everything almost usually is a confirmation.
Speaker: And whether we articulate to ourselves or not, we all do this one way or another. We're all visual creatures. we We process information visually better. And if you actually learn how to present information, and remember, I wanted to be a commercial artist as opposed to a fine artist,
Speaker: So i am I've been trained in typography and white space and negative space and all kinds of things. um Then you understand that not all packaging is created equal.
Speaker: you know, basically that's packaging. And so that was kind of where it started. And what I found is that When I went to law school and I've been a general counsel, one of my experience, have been which i i was really impacted impactful experience for me, i was part of many M&A transactions as general counsel, as a number two lawyer. We acquired lots of companies. i sold my companies to others. And what I found, which I think is really fascinating, M&A lawyers,
Speaker: you know, to do a reverse triangular merger, they will draw it on the board. Then they will take, ah you know, as some writing instrument and describe what's on the board, and then they will erase the board.
Speaker: And then when whomever receives that document will read the prose, and then what they will do is, will draw it on the board, and they're going make decisions from the board. And I always thought, why are we doing it? Why are we pretending that the drawing is not part of it? If we cannot describe it in words without a picture, in fact, we can't read and understand it unless we put it back in the picture. Why don't we just send a picture? Yeah.
Speaker: yeah And so that's kind of how it started. and And I saw a version of this problem in contracting and and and all of those things. And so that's where it started. The the journey to write this book this book started from that problem. But what happened in the meantime is technology.
Speaker: And honestly, you know, we are seeing this problem of, technology, Technology can give you a pretty good output, increasingly good output, sure requires human judgment.
Speaker: But whether you can comprehend what it gives you depends on how it's presented to you. yeah and And so there is a journey in publishing this book and ah with the American Bar Association, partially because of conversations. Our visuals really part of our legal issues.
Speaker: discussion should they be And in the meantime, conversations and technology moved on to AI. And we now know that we can have lots and lots of output that we won't be able to get through it.
Speaker: unless we can process it quicker with a visual. And I think the timing of the actual publishing the book is is really perfect because it is at the time where we are now surrounded by so much volume of words.
Speaker: that is created at a speed that we cannot humanly comprehend if we just read or type words. yeah And the visual piece of it becomes very important. That's why you see various LLMs actually presenting complex information in different ways. Yeah. Much longer answered to your question. No, but it gives us a lot to follow up on, which is um one one kind of off the bat question.
Speaker: Is this book written for lawyers? Is it written to help improve the relationship between lawyers who draft and write contracts and their business clients?
Speaker: Is it written to improve the relationship between counterparties as they're going back and forth or all of the above or something more on top of that? Yes, yes, and yes. Before the book, there's also a TEDx talk that talks about how, hey, during the pandemic, visuals were actually part of universal language.
Speaker: In fact, anything that we complex do, whether it's on the border with TSA or in the public transportation, or me traveling so to a place that where I don't speak the language, visuals help me navigate.
Speaker: and And so that is sort of consumer facing. Our relationship with law must be somehow be more relatable. And visuals, if you exclude them, you just took out a big piece of ability to communicate and have an impact. This book specifically, this is a book, um is published by the ABA, you know which is the, I call it a country club for American lawyers.
Speaker: Yes. that is and and and and it's and ah and i and i And that was actually an intention. I wanted to publish it with the American Bar Association because I think it's very important that the biggest, the most important country club for American lawyers accepts the fact that visuals are here, they're important to And here to stay. yeah And that's why we work very diligently with them.
Speaker: To make sure that we find their correct correct topic. And speak to American lawyers. Who touch lives every day. And want them to be actually effective and impactful. So yes. It is designed for lawyers to learn that visual vocabulary. Specifically in the context of contracts. Because we do contract a lot. If you can change things.
Speaker: comprehension, ability to deliver advice in contracts alone, I guarantee you will change many lives. And hence why the focus on contracting. And so we wanted to give tools, yes, to lawyers to ride better contracts.
Speaker: Yes, to lawyers to give advice so that they impact lives. And yes, to lawyers so that when they show up to negotiations, discussions with their counterparties, they don't do the funny dance of doing the picture, yeah writing about it, erasing the picture, sending the contract on the other party, recreate this dance. There's a better way.
Speaker: We don't have to make each other lives miserable. We can actually make it enjoyable. We can show up for each other. And instead of wasting time in translation, we can actually do business together and, I don't know, maybe become wealthy in the process. Yeah. I mean, maybe those who are able to adopt the core fundamentals in the book will have a leg up in negotiations. I don't know. Or...
Speaker: Hopefully and more likely, the overall process of negotiation is improved because there's a better understanding from both sides on what's needed for the deal. ah Very interesting points to explore. But but let me ask you this, ah a little bit of a maybe philosophical question.
Speaker: And what you said really resonates with me as well, which is that we are visual, very visual creatures. I am a visual learner. I've always kind of known that about myself. And when i when I teach or I describe things, I tend to draw a diagram because it just it helps me explain things. And I and i find that that it's received well. And we've been that way throughout history. Why is it, do you think, that our profession, that this is the first time someone's really paying attention to something like this from this angle? Why why do you think it's taken so long for lawyers to think about something like this?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, you know, giving one generic answer on behalf of all lawyers is a little hard. um But I do think it's the the timing is right. It's kind of what I alluded to publishing this book, the timing is right.
Speaker: um we Increasingly, what's valuable is not the information. In fact, the information is becoming commodities.
Speaker: In fact, it's so commodity that it it sort of clones itself and reproduces itself and using mathematical ratio. So creation of the information, extraction of the information cannot be the competitive advantage that you have in the marketplace in the world.
Speaker: um That is to say, we shouldn't be competing with AI on information alone. um But what's harder is this curation of the information, managing the focus, your focus, focus of your recipient.
Speaker: And then ultimately, this thing called impact and communication and changing lives, touching hearts, you know, um, Making sure that what you say is a signal, not noise.
Speaker: Saying enough necessary for this to register and for someone to act upon it. And move them from point A to point B.
Speaker: yeah That is valuable. That is much harder to recreate at scale, especially at scale. That is why human judgment, legal judgment becomes...
Speaker: of massive value. It's not that we have been good at teaching it before. We all know we haven't. It's just our ability to accept the margin of error was much higher.
Speaker: That is to say, we always, I joke that look we all knew that when we graduated from law school, we didn't know how to, most of us did not know how to draft contracts. And we thought it was cute.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh, well, I graduated from law school. I spent this much money. passed the bar. Ha ha ha. I've never been in court. I've never drafted a contract. I don't know what policies, but don't worry the world. 10 years from now, I'll be good. Maybe that was good enough of an answer.
Speaker: And In that age, it was an acceptable margin of error. In the age where AI can reproduce it this quickly, that gap is exposed and that gap feels eerie because it forces us to ask a question, hey, I just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on my legal education.
Speaker: And I have zero to bring to the table. Why am I here? Yeah. this is Not only does it highlight the gap of the process of learning for lawyers in general, one of the things that our profession is grappling with right now, and it will grapple with for a while, is if AI is now handling those tasks that get you to the judgment that is so valuable as a lawyer,
Speaker: How will these younger lawyers gain that judgment? Do you have any thoughts on that? Oh, I have so many thoughts on that because judgment and information are two different things.
Speaker: Okay. Making a decision is different from reviewing information. Influencing a decision by somebody else is a whole different ballgame.
Speaker: Those are very different skills. And I don't think that they are contradictory to AI. In fact, I think they're highly complementary. The rules of trade basically are usually based on competitive advantage.
Speaker: You're good at this. I'm comparatively good at this. If we collaborate and specialize, you bring something to the table. I bring something to the table. One plus one is greater than two.
Speaker: That's basically, in a nutshell, the reason why we trade with nations. Yeah. Well, that if you use that principle in partnering with AI and start thinking of it exactly as that as a partner, then you start thinking about it differently. Just like with your coworkers, you don't compete with people on your team.
Speaker: If you do, you're difficult, you'll probably lose a job. yeah But if you collaborate, you can be one plus one greater than two. So AI is exceedingly good partnering.
Speaker: sorting through a lot of data, information, and crunching numbers, and creating information. I'm not. Yeah. That's just true. Yep. But I am much better at assessing relating to humans.
Speaker: I'm much better at deciding what matters based on my experience, my human experiences. Sure, they could be legal experiences, but but what makes us impactful humans is so much more than our legal experiences. Yeah.
Speaker: I will partner with AI to extract information, to maybe benchmark whether I'm correct, to make sure that I look at reliable sources and that I can use my human judgment to actually change the hearts and minds of people around me.
Speaker: And that is, to me, at the core of what lawyers do. should be doing, what we should be teaching lawyers in law school. You know, I teach class at UC Law.
Speaker: Actually, yesterday was class number four. And we it's focused on product law. And we actually talked about contracts and how contracts are used in product creation.
Speaker: And I asked how many of you took contract law, which is usually required class in 1L. And then all of them raised their hands. And I said, what do they teach you in contract law? they They say contract. I was like, specifically, what have you teach you? Well, I'll tell you exactly what it teaches in contract law. It teaches you how to litigate contracts. yeah It teaches you how to destroy.
Speaker: yes That's essentially what we teach our 1Ls. What could possibly go wrong? And how you destroy? That is the first class you take as a first year student. Then I ask the second question, how many of you actually have taken a class to draft the contract?
Speaker: Basically, you learn how to destroy. Have you learned how to create? Less than 10% of the students raise their hand. Even today, when i graduated when I went to law school, we didn't have a drafting contract class.
Speaker: And even today, less than 10% of students in my class actually learn to create a contract, even though every single one of them learned to destroy it. yeah And then I asked the ultimate question that matters for my class in product counseling, which is how many of you actually learn to operationalize a contract?
Speaker: Yeah. Meaning not just destroy or create, but think about the impact on your customer success, on your returns, on your relationship with regulators, on how it's going to look on the acceptance page for consumers so you could don't create risk. How many of you actually, and the answer to that is a zero.
Speaker: And your impact is usually in most interactions is not in distraction. Right. It's in creation to some extent.
Speaker: And really, if you want to be impactful in the business, in operationalization. Yep. That's what makes the business go forward. ah At the end of the day, the contracts, this is the world I live in now. They're the lifeblood of the business. Exactly. so And it is it is much more than offer and acceptance. Exactly. If you offer, if your conversations are are like, oh what could possibly go wrong? Or let me help you to destroy. You just voted yourself out of 99% of conversations in the productive, prosperous business today. Yeah. One of the things you said about why the why behind the book is the ability to communicate more effectively in written format or in in visual format.
Speaker: What is the cost to the business now if that's not happening effectively? Is that part of the calculus on kind of what is the impact, the potential impact of this book? Yeah, the impact is is is is is massive.
Speaker: Ask someone who hired a wrong lawyer. Yeah. yeah They will tell you exactly what the impact is. If you have a lawyer on premises who is focused on, let's just say, distraction,
Speaker: ah What could possibly go wrong? Who does not even have creation skills, let alone operationalization skills? That is the most dangerous creature in your company.
Speaker: yeah Because they're smart, they're well-educated, and they are focused on the wrong things. yeah The cost is...
Speaker: Depends on the size of the deal. It depends on the size of the deal. But essentially, somewhere a between opportunity to cost, out-of-pocket cost, driving your personnel out of the company, yep creating conflicts.
Speaker: not proactively operationalizing, managing risks forward. The cost, if you add it all up, I would say huge. Yeah. You also said earlier that um the timing for this ah in the age of AI feels right.
Speaker: what What do you really mean by that? Is it about AI readiness? it is Is it getting legal departments and lawyers closer to AI readiness? What is it about the age of AI that's making it so right for this to happen now?
Speaker: Yeah, I will actually say it a little bit more precisely, is that I am grateful for the roadblocks that I've encountered for the last almost seven years in publishing this book. This book has gone through, it's probably the longest book. I've written quite a few books um in law, in business and leadership.
Speaker: And usually somewhere between a year or two I'm done. This took me seven years. yeah and And this been gone through three revisions and different focuses. And in the process, I brought the right mix of of co-authors to to bring it together. And let's just say I do very few things for longer than five years.
Speaker: Other than being married to my husband now, famous 40 years. Other than being alive for, I'm not going to tell you how many decades. Other than having my two children that are about to graduate from high school. Other than those events, I do very few things for five more than five years because i teach I view those things as a big commitment and a massive opportunity cost. And I get into very few obligations that require such a big commitment from me. I really value a year out of my life and five seems intimate to me. Yeah. Infinite to me. So if I if i had a full disclosure about that, I might not have started it
Speaker: Just to be very clear. But the beautiful thing about ignorance is that I yeah i got courage to start this journey. yeah I did think it was going to be hard because I don't think most lawyers are trained to appreciate visuals. And in fact, they think it contradicts their impact.
Speaker: But, um and I have encountered enough obstacles that it derailed me to about seven years total journey. And at the end of this all, if I had a full disclosure, I probably would not have started.
Speaker: But today I'll tell you that I'm really grateful for that. Yeah. Because had this been but this book published a few years earlier, i think it would have been too early. I think now is the right time to talk about this thing called human judgment, communication for impact, using everything in your toolbox. Yes words.
Speaker: Yes, visuals and so much more and really optimizing not for information, but human judgment, lives we change, impact we make, whether we move people from point A to point B. Yeah.
Speaker: Lawyers have been historically viewed as wordy. we've We all saw those contracts from the 1600s and the 1800s, which had seven preambles and all this flowery language forth.
Speaker: flowery language and so forth um And now bringing visual literacy into a contract, do you find that or do you think that there is a hierarchy of importance with written words, even if we talk about writing in so you know so-called simple language, a contract in simple language? But do you think there's a hierarchy in your mind? visual The visual impact of the document is more important than the words on the page? Or do you think they work in harmony together? And that's really the aim here.
Speaker: You need bows. Yeah. Words are also visual. True. yeah And, you know, there there has been now a trend for a while. You know, you can, if you if you're really interested to see how that trend progresses, I would invite you to use a wayback machine and just look at the Google contract, which is what many public contracts are benchmarked against.
Speaker: um If you look at it two years ago, four years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, you can actually trace that progression and that progression will involve something more white space. More visual cues, more navigational devices, plain language. It will have all of those things. That's what it means to communicate for impact, especially in the consumer-facing business like like Google.
Speaker: um So I think all of it is important. That's why it's no incident or accident that this book actually has a very meaningful chapter around plain language and and concise communication. And it's funny, you said you started, you know, lawyers are known for talking too much. Yes, guilty.
Speaker: Clearly. wordy Wordy by nature. yeah Wordy by nature. In fact, you know, You know, one of the ways I like to use LLMs is actually look at my transcript and see how I would have done better. yeah And LLMs are kind of like a child. They tell you the truth, especially that you let them. I don't know if you ever asked to analyze your transcript for feedback because I do this routinely. And yeah, it basically tells me, Olga, if you said half of what you said, you would have been more impactful. Yeah, it's really is such a good point. i
Speaker: where Where I can recall myself ah in a speaker or reading something. the more concise, and short doesn't always mean effective and short doesn't always mean concise. Concise has a very specific meaning, which is that you delivered the information that you needed to deliver, i don't know if it's as short timeframe or length as possible, but I've always found that to be the way that my brain picks up information the best.
Speaker: Maybe that's not true for everybody, but I've always found that to be true in the way that I have absorbed information. Yes. And silence and communication is the white space that allows people to follow you
Speaker: and develop a point of view and process. Most of us cannot process information at a speaking rate.
Speaker: So many words will essentially mean that half of the information or more is lost. Yeah. Oof. um is is it It is to it's such a fascinating topic to me because the way human beings absorb information, the way that we learn, it's really changing with AI because information is everywhere. And the ape the ability to take information a library full of information and data and summarize it in some fashion that's available to us very, very quickly now.
Speaker: And how we absorb that and what we do with it, I think it's is's going to be really cool to to watch in the age of AI. um couple more questions and we'll and then we'll wrap, Olga. We're going to be doing a webinar with you and your co-authors.
Speaker: um So without giving too much away about the webinar, and have a couple of follow-ups to this as well. But what what is your hope that people are able to take away from that webinar, which will be sort of of which will be ah kind of the ah the the ins and outs of the book itself and why it's important and and how it works?
Speaker: Well, I hope you all join because when you do, you will get a lot of takeaways and it will be very useful. I specifically will focus what I think is very useful for for lawyers in there every day is communicating to executive members and boards for impact.
Speaker: Those are decision makers. They touch your life. They in the big company touch many lives, lives of employees, customers and their families.
Speaker: So that's your your your audience for impact. yeah Massive. yeah yeah And you often, you know, when you make to the CEO appointment or board presentation, you have what, 10, 20 minutes, 30 if they're highly engaged. That's all you have. Yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, so you talk about things like contracts, which you probably do because contracts have a ton of operationalized information and impact on the business.
Speaker: And there's so many things to talk about. Yet you only have 10 to 30 minutes to impact the life of many people when you have access to the one to five decision makers.
Speaker: How do you show up talking about contracts? What does that communication, let's just say, on the deck looks like? That's what I will talk about. Yeah.
Speaker: And I think that's a very important conversation. That's how you touch many lives. Agreed. Agreed. Okay. um Two more. So along the same lines... Do you think this book will be too advanced for law students or do you think there's an expectation that they should read it because it will have an impact on how they think about their work, whether they end up becoming commercial attorneys or not?
Speaker: Because written word is written word and how visually appealing it is will matter. And and that's a basic premise with which you wrote this book. i It is my hope that in my lifetime will change contract teaching in 1L, not just being limited to destruction, but also include creation yeah and operationalization of contracts. yeah Contracts are legal creations. They do not exist in nature.
Speaker: They're the most unnatural and useful things in the world. They make our society work, especially in the capitalist world of the United States. yeah So it is my sincere goal and hope that in my lifetime, i will see us moving away from merely teaching the destruction, litigation of contracts to creation and what I call higher knowledge of operationalization and communication about contracts.
Speaker: And yes, I think every law student and every lawyer will benefit from reading the book. More importantly, my coauthors and I are very actively working with various law schools to give them a module, at least the module. Yeah. If not a co-course that actually goes with this book. So the proactive creation And operationalization and communication about contracts is actually taught in law school because our impact will go from fringe when we teach just distraction to mainstream if we can graduate it to operationalization and communication of contracts.
Speaker: I love that. I think law students have a ah great opportunity here. Okay, last question. Along the similar veins, what impact do you anticipate that this book will have on ah contracting technology providers, for example, like Spot Draft or others that do redlining only or or things of that nature? Do you anticipate that it changes the way we have to think about the way we build technology or um articulate the value proposition for our for our technology.
Speaker: I think we as contract technology creators are meaningfully impacting the movement of treating contracts just like papers.
Speaker: And I don't mean just actual papers. Digital paper is still paper. Yeah. And moving it into the world of operationalized assets that are used, yes, by lawyers and yes, by the rest of the business in a way to reduce friction, increase velocity, manage risks, and not just centered in the legal department, but everyone in the company having an appropriate relationship with the contract
Speaker: appropriate to their function and their abilities and their education and experiences. And so we actually, you know, as you know, I ran a CLM company. Yeah. And I we were very adamant about redefining that relationship with contract.
Speaker: With workflow alone, you can move contracts away from this paper into a more asset category. Yeah. In the age of AI, you can do so even as other ways. That's one of the reasons why I'm focused on data and decision making.
Speaker: And yes, if you want to touch human lives and with technology, UI UX design is an important piece. So we as technologists in contracting, I do think we have an important mission in life and that is to change technology.
Speaker: human relationship with contracts, helping their comprehension, helping their understanding, helping their operationalization of the contracts, and ultimately having an appropriate relationship with the contract, appropriate to their function, appropriate to changing their lives.
Speaker: oh What a great way to wrap the podcast episode on what I think is going to be an exciting new way to think about contracting as we explore the outcomes of your book. Olga, thank you so much for joining me for all your incredible insights. We probably could have gone for a couple hours more, ah but I do want to be cognizant of our time and the listeners time as well.
Speaker: Very much looking forward to the work that we're going to be doing with you and your co-authors on this book. um we will be providing an opportunity for folks to buy the book as well with our links. And then certainly on the webinar, we'll get into some of the inner workings of how to actually leverage the book and use it for your benefit.
Speaker: Thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you for inviting me. It's been a pleasure. all right.
