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Ep 91: Why Legal Work Will Never Be the Same with SpotDraft’s Shashank Bijapur and Akshay Verma
101 Plays29 days ago
Why is technology the right leverage point for improving how a legal team works together? What did it take to start and sustainably grow SpotDraft? And how do you transition from a more traditional legal career to one leading a legal tech business?
Join Shashank Bijapur, SpotDraft’s Co-Founder & CEO and Akshay Verma, SpotDraft’s COO as they sit down with Tyler Finn at the SpotDraft Summit 2025 and break down their journeys from lawyers to tech executives and legal innovators.
Listen as Shashank and Akshay discuss the origins of Spotdraft, offer their expert predictions on the future of legal work and AI, explain why legal operations professionals should aim for COO roles, and much more.
Read detailed summary: https://www.spotdraft.com/podcast/episode-91
Topics
Introduction: 0:00
What inspired Shashank to start SpotDraft: 2:38
Leading strong customer success teams: 4:40
Approaches to fundraising: 6:38
Looking back on Legal Ops at Facebook: 9:14
Where is the legal ops profession headed?: 11:45
Hiring a legal ops professional for COO roles: 13:06
Seeing yourself as a lawyer in the business world: 15:48
Building balance on an executive team: 18:19
Advice to lawyers looking to pivot: 21:27
How AI will evolve the way in-house teams work?: 25:06
Will lawyers accept AI risks?: 27:52
The future of law firms and AI: 32:50
Rapid-fire questions: 38:52
Connect with us:
Shashank Bijapur - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shashankbijapur/
Akshay Verma - https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshay-verma-esq/
Tyler Finn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerhfinn
SpotDraft - https://www.linkedin.com/company/spotdraft
SpotDraft is a leading contract lifecycle management platform that solves your end-to-end contract management needs.
Visit https://www.spotdraft.com to learn more.
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Transcript
The Digital Evolution in Law
00:00:00
Speaker
What is the greatest innovation that lawyers have seen? It was a patch to Microsoft Word called track changes. That's when people started moving from sending faxes to red lines and track changes. And that was way back in 1994.
00:00:14
Speaker
Richard Susskind came out in the mid 90s and said, every lawyer is going to be using email in the next five years. And the entire legal profession laughed at it. What responsibilities do we have as tech providers? If you bring AI on, think of it as you know a lawyer fresh out of law school. You need to train it, you need to give it the right guidance, you need to reinforce learning, and it will get better over time.
00:00:39
Speaker
Something that you know now that you wish that you'd known back then. Do not watch Suits. It's a good show. And read John Grisham. In part, I went to law school and did litigation because of a few good men, so it's a good cautionary tale.
00:00:56
Speaker
Yeah.
Starting and Growing SpotDraft
00:01:02
Speaker
Why is technology the right leverage point for improving how a legal team works together? What does it take to start and sustainably grow a tech company?
00:01:15
Speaker
And how do you transition from a more traditional legal career to one leading a legal tech business? I don't know if they have all the answers to those questions, but today we are joined on the abstract by two of my colleagues, two members of our exec team, Shashank Bijapur, our co-founder and CEO, and of course Akshay Verma, our COO.
00:01:40
Speaker
Before starting SPOT Draft, Shashank moved from India to the US, received his law degree from Harvard, and spent a few years practicing at White & Case in New York.
00:01:51
Speaker
Akshay also started his career at law firms practicing environmental law before joining Axiom in a sort of customer facing and strategy business development capacity.
00:02:02
Speaker
The time when they were really kickstarting the ALSP revolution. He then spent time leading legal operations at Facebook, taught at Facebook, not Meta, and Coinbase before joining the Spot Draft team 2023.
00:02:20
Speaker
Thanks guys for joining me here today in San Francisco at the Spot Draft Summit for a slightly different episode of the Abstract. Thank you for having us over and finally after requesting you for so many months, we've made it. and Okay, Shashank, I want to start with you.
SpotDraft's Early Days and Customer Success
00:02:40
Speaker
ah Where did the idea for Spot Draft come from and how did you get the business started? Yeah, um so this was when I was at White & Case, and I remember distinctly it was New Year's Eve, and I was sitting and doing due diligence reports, and I could see the ball drop in the background somewhere, ah and I was reading New York Times eating Chinese food, and ah the headline said that there's a guy called Elon Musk who's making self-driving cars, and that's when it sort of hit me.
00:03:13
Speaker
Like, cars are driving themselves, and here I am. ah you know cutting and pasting words on a piece of paper over and over again. I mean, something had to change. And then I looked back and I said, what is the greatest innovation that lawyers have seen?
00:03:27
Speaker
It was a patch to Microsoft Word called Track Changes. That's when people started moving from sending faxes to red lines and track changes. And that was way back in 1994. Fast forward 2025, we are still stuck in the dark ages.
00:03:43
Speaker
So that sort of motivated me to start SpotDraft and make lives around contracting easier. I don't think I've ever asked you this before. I'm really curious. Who was Spot Tref's first customer? right like Who was the customer who said, okay, I'm in to try this new tech solution that no one else has tried yet.
00:04:03
Speaker
Yeah, so when we started we had a slightly different product and then it was a very large Japanese bank. And like how most startups do, it was a lot of PowerPoint presentation and a little bit of product that got them sold.
00:04:19
Speaker
ah They were our first customer. And then when we moved to the workflows part of the business, it was this really large ah workflows company, interestingly, that took a bet on us.
00:04:30
Speaker
And we just went and hustled our way through and that's how we got them as a customer. Spot Draft has definitely come a long way since then. Akshay, you spend a lot of time with our customers day in, day out, working with our customer success team.
00:04:46
Speaker
I think you've helped bring some outside perspective and rigor. I mean, we have really good customer success. I think that's one of the things that we're known for, but you brought some of that outside perspective to CS.
00:04:58
Speaker
what do you What have you tried to impress on that team about working with our customers, ways that implementations might go wrong? Because you implemented technology yourself yeah for legal works.
00:05:13
Speaker
um you know i've I've been a buyer and a seller. This is my kind of second stint as a seller. Axiom was the first. And in between those, I had two roles where I was a buyer and technology was a big part of what I bought.
00:05:26
Speaker
um And it's a journey, it's a journey for the buyer. and And I think empathy goes a long way, whether it's sales, you know, pre-sales, BDR, customer success, you know, all of those roles and functions require a ton of empathy.
00:05:40
Speaker
But that's not enough. I think you have to understand the persona um and kind of their ins and outs of of why they need to do things. um So I brought a little bit of that perspective to the table for our customer success teams.
00:05:55
Speaker
And then beyond that, you know, things almost never go right. There's always something that pops up. um And when you're the new kid on the block with a customer and if you're implementing, you are the new kid on the block.
00:06:07
Speaker
Guess who they look to point the finger at? um Navigating that conversation is critical because it's going to happen. And that requires both the empathy that I talked about, but also the tactical aspect of navigat helping a ah customer navigate those problems by telling them that there might be some things that they're not doing well that could be you know the cause of what's going on.
00:06:32
Speaker
um That's both a cultural shift, but also an incredibly important tactic for success.
Fundraising and LegalOps Transformation
00:06:38
Speaker
I think well most people, if they're thinking about Spot Draft, hopefully they're thinking about the summit or maybe they're attending, but they're probably also thinking about our recent Series B announcement.
00:06:47
Speaker
We raised $54 million. dollars ah I think you know there's a lot of money flowing into legal tech. What I'm really curious about from of you but from both of you is the philosophy around fundraising. Because to me, fundraising is obviously important. It's important to growth, it's important to keeping the lights on, but it's just one part of building a sustainable business, right? that The NASDAQ billboard that we were taking photos in front of yeah is not like the endpoint on the journey, I guess.
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah. I think what's important is we find the right kind of capital from the right kind of people that help us in the growth that we want to do. ah We were lucky to find, so we've got a fantastic set of investors who are already invested in the company and we have Vertex and Trident Partners who joined us.
00:07:39
Speaker
I see this year as being a pivotal year in how technology is moving. We've had about two and a half, three years of LLMs coming in. and If you see large language models, language as the operator word,
00:07:55
Speaker
you know The toughest English that you're going to read perhaps after Shakespeare is that damn contract that reads notwithstanding anything contained in this agreement and subject to clause 3.4. Also written at the time of Shakespeare, though. Yeah. The first draft and we've just been...
00:08:12
Speaker
And it is ah language that costs $1,200 an hour. So it's ripe for disruption. So you needed the capital to invest in the team, invest in the future, which is AI, and invest in our customers who are really helping us grow.
00:08:29
Speaker
Anything you'd add to that? Yeah, look, ah at the end of the day, it's about trust, right? So these investors are trusting us, but they're also backing us and they see something in us. um And to me, it's the start of the next phase in our journey.
00:08:43
Speaker
um Ideas are everywhere. Shashank had an idea. Guess what? Guess what got us here? Execution. So that obviously falls squarely in the CEO's lap to a great extent. um but But that's our next real challenge here is can we execute towards the goals that we set?
00:08:59
Speaker
um And there're deal to Shashank's point, there's a lot that's changing. AI is really changing everything, including how we think about our product, how we think about our customers, how they think about us. So all of those things are going to be top of mind for us as we move forward with this new round.
00:09:14
Speaker
One thing that fundraising does that you referenced is it allows us to bring on great talent, right? And I do think, I don't want to blow up your ego too much, but it was a really big win for us to be able to bring on another, right, super experienced member of our exec team when you joined us in 2023.
00:09:30
Speaker
um You came from a legal ops background, but I think when you first joined Facebook and first sort of took on a legal ops role there, that profession looked pretty different, right? It's it's changed a bit.
00:09:43
Speaker
What did it look like at at that point in time? Yeah, that was six years ago. um so it's not like it was a monumental timeframe, but but a lot has changed. I also, I realized this morning between Facebook, Coinbase and Spot Draft, I've been all blue for the last six years. So that's all that's kind of ah that's kind of a cool thing. I haven't had to change my wardrobe much.
00:10:02
Speaker
and The legal ops function, I think, is at the forefront more than it's ever been before. We were just having an advisory board meeting before this before this podcast episode, and we were just talking about um how many of our customers where you know the main stakeholder has been a lawyer for for almost the entirety of our US entry.
00:10:28
Speaker
um is really starting, it really has shifted about a year, a year and a half ago, where even midsize and smaller companies are now bringing on a head of legal ops to help manage the business side of the equation for for legal departments.
00:10:40
Speaker
I don't think that stops. I think that continues to grow. The importance that that function brings to the table, the power that that brings to the table, I think those are all things that we are not only going to be able to benefit from,
00:10:52
Speaker
but that we're going to be able to serve in a much better capacity moving forward. So I'm all for it as ah as a former practicing and recovering lawyer. I love this side of the equation. Yeah, and I feel like um legal sort of is a laggard in adoption of new trends. They believe in precedent. They believe in stereotypes. It takes a little bit of time for them to get used to.
00:11:13
Speaker
so if you look at how um sales ops, revenue operations, DevOps, each of those has evolved, I think that evolution into legal came in ah tad little later.
00:11:25
Speaker
um The Office of the General Counsel isn't a very modern one. It's it's one that's about... 20-30 years where it's suddenly blown up, especially in the last 20 years. And now I think it is the the world and the realm of legal ops to take over a large part of making legal operate smoothly.
00:11:45
Speaker
Do you think that legal ops, I mean, we can get into like some actual topics here too. you think that legal ops as a profession is headed in the right direction? i mean, I see, and I haven't been working with legal ops professionals for as long as I have with GC's office of GC.
00:12:03
Speaker
I see a ton of potential here, but I wonder sometimes if too much attention is just focused on maybe the most successful people in the legal ops space yeah and not enough on some of the folks who are kind of day in, day out doing the tech implementation, let's say. Yeah. yeah I think, you know, if you look across the cross section of job descriptions that are on LinkedIn right now for legal ops roles,
00:12:31
Speaker
you will see a pretty broad spectrum yeah of what they look like. And that to me is an indication that the market still does not fully understand the value proposition, um the the power that it can bring to the table and really what it is. So there'll be some growing pains.
00:12:46
Speaker
here What's really great to see is the proliferation of the role itself and the number of roles that are open. and the openness. And we we just we just saw a great acquisition by TechGC, yeah who acquired a legal ops community called Link.
00:12:59
Speaker
To me, the marriage of those two roles is not only necessary, I think it's going to be a great thing for all businesses moving forward. Why were you looking for someone with a legal ops background when you were thinking about hiring for the COO role?
00:13:13
Speaker
I'm curious for your view on that and then sort of why you wanted to step into into this. I think LegalOps role, perhaps ah the logical growth journey for every LegalOps person is to become the COO of a company and and lead operations ah pretty much across the board.
00:13:32
Speaker
If you look at what Legal does, um it is the connective tissue for all of the departments of the company. and legal ops is that connective tissue that connects legal to the rest of the business.
00:13:42
Speaker
So it it is a role that they've done before, they've experienced before, and Akshay especially comes with a background of knowing the market, the people, understanding, great understanding of the business, and has a lot of empathy in how he leads. So he was a very natural choice for us.
00:14:02
Speaker
I don't know that I would have thought about a CO role at all, to be honest. It's it's really, I think, um now that I'm in it, or actually even before that, when Shashank first raised it with me, in fact, I remember exactly where we were standing at clock in Vegas. And I was like, and I was actually so telling him, you have some great ideas for you. And he's like, no, no, no, no You misunderstand what I said. I said, oh, so I hadn't really thought of it. But, you know, that's some some of the best roles come wrong that way.
00:14:30
Speaker
And now that I've been in it, it is a very natural evolution. And part of my own kind of evaluation of the role beyond the company was where would i go next what's next for me um in my growth journey as an individual and as a professional after having been at two giants and having done two of those roles but what would be next and i didn't have a great answer for myself and and It's not like if it's going to stop working tomorrow.
00:14:59
Speaker
so So this felt like it could be a really cool new step. And then I did a little bit of research and like nobody had really done it before. I think maybe one or two people had had taken on similar types of roles.
00:15:10
Speaker
So that was exciting in and of itself.
Transitioning from Law to Business Leadership
00:15:12
Speaker
and It's a space I knew really well. um Obviously, it's kind of a return to my birthplace in a lot of ways, kind of going back to a company that was founded in India. But I think just from an operational perspective, I had seen and touched so many different aspects of what I do now at the two companies that I was at previously.
00:15:28
Speaker
It really was an opportunity to take that skill set to the next level. So you went from working at two big giants to laying down the foundation of the next big giant. Exactly. gri The next blue giant. The next blue Hey, blue is the color of trust, right? That's why. One of the things that I like to do on this podcast is as people move through their careers, you can say this in different ways, people who, you know,
00:15:57
Speaker
have kind of slightly winding careers or I heard a term that I thought was interesting spiral careers. i was listening to a podcast with Arthur Brooks a couple days ago. Hopefully not spiraling downwards. No, no, no, no, no
00:16:14
Speaker
I like to explore the mindset that's sort of required to make some of those shifts. You were a lawyer, now you're the founder of a business and you're the CEO. You are a lawyer, now you're the COO.
00:16:28
Speaker
um i mean I guess the first question is, do either of you think of yourselves as lawyers anymore? Is that an important component of your identity? I can go first. I mean, I think lawyer first pretty much in everything I do. Interesting. um but And it takes a little bit of time to think that taking a risk is is is okay. right You don't have to operate in areas of black and white.
00:16:54
Speaker
You can take a risk and that's that's fine. That takes a little bit of doing. And the second thing that I had to change was ah doing it quick. ah doing Getting the first version out, ah you know making it quick and dirty and just getting it out there is more important than just waiting for that perfect version number 23 execution.docx being rolled out.
00:17:19
Speaker
I'm going to say Shashank was probably a much better lawyer than I was. ah i Maybe this was inherent. I and never really gave a shit about risk.
00:17:30
Speaker
And I don't mean that I would just go out and do stupid things. But to me, the calculus was always very different. And it showed up in my feedback in my law firm days. um Well, we didn't go deep enough on this issue. And the I'm like, but the outcome is the outcome.
00:17:45
Speaker
So in a lot of ways, I kind of fell into a role where risk taking was not just okay, it was necessary. you cannot You cannot go build a business without taking massive risk. And I mean massive risk. Yeah.
00:17:59
Speaker
you know financial risk personal risk all of those kinds of things you can't do it so you have to have the makeup for it you have to have the stomach for it and then you have to have the judgment for it and i found a lot of satisfaction in being able to navigate those issues from a risk perspective which i think is difficult for most lawyers so i've really enjoyed that shift for myself i i do have a lot of people on who are now doing different things. I mean, I have GCs on and heads of legal ops, but also people who are doing things that are are very different.
00:18:30
Speaker
um To what extent do you think that a good exec team needs balance or needs these different sort of lenses to view the business or view opportunities through?
00:18:42
Speaker
Because, I mean, I'm not trying to push a narrative, but I certainly try to have guests on who are doing things differently and who have taken those risks. It's not to say that we should neglect the idea maybe, i guess, and I want to hear what the two of you think, that, yeah, like maybe, you know, one member of the exec team should be a little bit more conservative, and that's a very important role to play. We shouldn't shortchange that, I guess, is what I'm saying.
00:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. and And when we sit on the table, um you know, the founders, Akshay, we all come in with varying different opinions or methods to get to the same end.
00:19:21
Speaker
But if we align on the end being the same, um getting the different opinions on the table is important. And sometimes you just end up not realizing the importance of perhaps going slow or de-risking or taking that extra risk. And you're just so used to thinking... For those who are listening to the audio version of this, Akshay raised his hand as the guy who is pushing faster, faster.
00:19:50
Speaker
and so So um I think it is important, but it's also important to make sure that you're all on the same page and that kind of percolates down to every other bit of the company.
00:20:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think balance is key. um And the best way to do that is to hire people that don't think like you. So yeah I tend to be the person who pushes and like, hey, let's do this. And not that I throw caution to the wind, but then we have other people, even outside the exec team and senior leadership who are a little bit more cautious and ask questions and to me as long as there's a lot of safety in the dialogue then we will arrive at a decision and a path forward that we agree upon whether or not it works remains to be seen and we can always recalibrate but but i think having that that dialogue is critical
00:20:37
Speaker
Are there ways that other execs who might be listening can take entire intentional steps to create that sort of safety for different opinions or different views to bubble up or rise up?
00:20:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and it took me a really long time to get here as a human. Self-awareness is really important. So what are you like? Who are you? And then having the discipline and the intention after that to make sure that you know we gravitate towards people we like.
00:21:05
Speaker
Sure. But to not just hire people you like because people you like tend to be like you. And so I think avoiding that to a great extent is is a really important thing. And I think it's a discipline.
00:21:17
Speaker
Yeah, I hear and um not necessarily hiring people like you and also hiring people who are way smarter than you. I mean, then you know you're in safe hands. You both, as we've talked about, have transitioned away from practicing law full time.
00:21:32
Speaker
And i think there are a lot of people out there who are happy lawyers, I really do, who like the profession. But there are also a lot of people out there who are unhappy lawyers and think that they maybe should be doing something different. um How would you advise them on finding, whether it's more meaning or more happiness in their careers?
00:21:57
Speaker
um killing looking right at me So, you know, i I came into this very unintentionally. So my lens is a very kind of backward looking one, lot of hindsight.
00:22:13
Speaker
um But about six years ago, I started teaching a class at Santa Clara, which is exactly on this topic, or at least it touches on these. It's about it's called Critical Lawyering Skills, and it's about career pathing in the law.
00:22:25
Speaker
And, you know, the first two weeks with the students, we do a lot of introspection. They start to at least expressly and on paper write down who they are, what they care about, what gives them energy, all the things that you never talk about in law school.
00:22:45
Speaker
Right. um And most people just don't. we't We were not brought up to really think that way. And it doesn't mean that that's the path you follow. But I think that introspection is key. And again, when I look back after being at Axiom for about six months, I was like, why did I go become a lawyer in the first place?
00:23:02
Speaker
And I look back and and I was like, this is what I was meant to do. Like I was meant to do business, but it never crossed my mind. um And now that I look back on it, I look at the level of satisfaction, creativity, problem solving, human interaction, all of those things are things that I really thrive upon when it comes to a career and a job and a role.
00:23:22
Speaker
um Those were not things that I found to be present when I was practicing law. And so I think if you can understand that about yourself, then it opens up a lot of doors.
00:23:34
Speaker
If you're already in law school or you've graduated, it takes a little bit of courage. For me, I've been practicing for six years. takes a lot of courage to be like, I'm going to put this license away. yeah And I've worked my tail off and I passed the bar and I was working gargantuan hours a week.
00:23:52
Speaker
And that was my identity. And so I had to remove myself from that before I could really start enjoying that role. And then it just, it it took off after that. Yeah, I think, um and I'm speaking specifically to in-house lawyers, ah there is this conception of ah legal and the business.
AI's Role in Legal Transformation
00:24:11
Speaker
I feel legal is a very essential part of the business. Because every dollar coming in or out is because somebody has signed a piece of paper that legal has been involved in some form or the other.
00:24:24
Speaker
They know how to mediate, they know how to, they've done pretty much all of the buying and selling and been involved there. ah They know how boards ah look, operate and decide. I think they should look at this as a natural progression into what they call as business. And Just because you went to law school doesn't mean you need to be a lawyer for the rest of your life. I think there are opportunities far varied based on what you've learned at law school and what you've practiced so far.
00:24:57
Speaker
And I think technology is providing so much more of that opportunity now. like think That's the coolest thing about it. The opportunity is far greater now than it ever was. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about tech.
00:25:08
Speaker
We're here at our summit. It's all around AI. ah i think I know the answer to this piece of the question, which is, you know, how do you think AI is going to evolve the way that in-house legal teams work and will it evolve the way that in-house legal teams work.
00:25:26
Speaker
But I think the other component to this is where is that change going to come from? So how is this going to happen? what What might happen for in-house teams? What's possible?
00:25:38
Speaker
So I keep saying this, that AI is not going to take away ah jobs of lawyers, but somebody, a lawyer with AI is definitely going to take away your job.
00:25:49
Speaker
So knowying ah knowing how how to leverage AI to do ah what lawyers do on an ongoing basis is is very important and essential.
00:26:00
Speaker
I feel the way intake works, ah of work, the way research works, the way ah we are able to um you know navigate contract negotiations, red lines, all of that is going to change in a very fundamental way because of how what AI is able to do.
00:26:18
Speaker
It's going to be much more accurate, much more precise with better recall than any other human possible. So this is now going to be a necessary toolkit.
00:26:30
Speaker
Almost as much as you know Word and need to have Word in your daily job, you need to know how to leverage AI to do your job better. Yeah, Richard Susskind came out in the mid ninety s and said, every lawyer is going to be using email in the next five years.
00:26:46
Speaker
And the entire legal profession laughed at it. So to me, um you know I'll echo everything that Shashank just said, it's a tool. It's a tool. It's not going to replace jobs. It is going to replace or enable tasks.
00:27:01
Speaker
And if I was to put my legal operations hat on and I look at a legal department, there is a ton of manual tasks that lawyers do. And so the the very crux of legal operations is to set the legal department up for success by having the lawyers and the department focus on core strategic work. 80, 90, I don't know, there's a large percentage number, I don't know what it is, it depends on the department, of those tasks do not fall into that category.
00:27:29
Speaker
Yet they're being done. They're necessary, they need to be done, but it's not really legal work. So I think that's really where AI can be an enabler and a superpower for lawyers. We have to learn how to use it.
00:27:40
Speaker
um I'm teaching my kids how to use it safely and effectively, hopefully, hopefully not cheating on their homework. But but it's going to be it has to be a part of their makeup as they as they progress in in their own lives.
00:27:52
Speaker
We heard in the first year, I think, after ChatGPT was released about a lot of the risks associated, that's fine. I mean, that's sort of how new technology comes out. We should think about the risks.
00:28:04
Speaker
You mean the lawyers pointed out the risks? Correct. Oh, how about that? But I guess the question to the two of you is, um Are folks still too risk averse about this?
00:28:15
Speaker
but some and some of this is i mean you know Some of this has been solved for, right? and You wouldn't allow all your software engineers to go and get their own personal licenses to ChatGP. You have an enterprise license and you're not going to let it train on your data, meaning on like super important, valuable parts of your code base or you know So, not all the societal issues with AI have been solved, obviously, but some of these issues that are very relevant to corporate lawyers have been solved.
00:28:44
Speaker
But are people people still thinking about this in too risk averse a way, do you think? What's what's your experience with that right now I think there's a little bit too much of um you know risk averse ah behavior that's going on here.
00:28:58
Speaker
here I mean, there's risk in driving a car, catching a flight and you know going to the gym. The question is, can you do things safer and take all the precautions to ensure that ah those risks can be mitigated? And systems today, including what SpotDraft is building and launching soon, um has pretty much eliminated the risk of hallucination by grounding and ensuring that the right sources give you the information and you see where the information is coming from.
00:29:27
Speaker
So they're getting better. so if you If you look at it, do you guys know when in 2008 when Apple launched its App Store, what was the number one paid app?
00:29:40
Speaker
The app was it was called Flashlight. ah du yeah yeah That was the number one paid app. And do you know what was the number one free app? It was an app called iBeer.
00:29:51
Speaker
where it just showed a beer and you could just pretend like you were drinking. No way. and today and And today just look at what smartphones can do. yeah you have It's your ah work device, it is your entertainment device, your health device, communication device.
00:30:07
Speaker
It's evolved. Today we may be in the eye beer or the flashlight era of AI, but you know it it will only evolve. It's a lot better than that. yeah It just took it just took what two months to get to 100 million users.
00:30:23
Speaker
The telephone took 70 years now to get there. So that's the difference. like I think as humans, we tend to approach new, un-understood things from a place of fear. that's just It's a natural thing.
00:30:38
Speaker
When you add lawyers to those humans, it becomes even more exaggerated. So yes, I think people will approach this from a place of fear and that's okay. I think it's very natural. I think it's a natural cycle that we'll go through.
00:30:51
Speaker
How do you break through that? You educate, you learn, um you learn to trust over time. You will learn to trust the output of AI over time. The more that you use it, the more that it learns, and then the more that you will start to trust it.
00:31:05
Speaker
To me, that's just a matter of time. But for the time being, yes, um there are going to be all kinds of trials and errors and misconceptions and all those kinds of things are going to happen with AI.
00:31:16
Speaker
But it's inevitable. It is absolutely inevitable and it's necessary. I think it's going to be a great thing for our economies. Yeah, the way I would approach this problem is if you bring AI on, think of it as ah you know a lawyer fresh out of law school. like You need to train it, you need to give it the right guidance, you need to reinforce learning and it will get better over time.
00:31:39
Speaker
But that investment is needed for it to become truly 100% near human-like in its output. I think that, I'm asking questions, but I also have one perspective that I would add here, which is you brought up self-driving cars earlier.
00:31:55
Speaker
I think people are very focused with new technologies on errors of commission, right? Like the self-driving car didn't see that one pedestrian and hit the pedestrian and of course, that's not a good thing. right We feel bad for the pedestrian. We ask ourselves, how could we improve the cameras or the LIDAR the software or whatever it is.
00:32:15
Speaker
There's also errors of omission, right like meaning if you don't have self-driving cars, freeway deaths aren't going to go anywhere. and those numbers Pedestrian deaths in cities which are at an all-time high, that number is going to stay at an all-time high. right It's not going to go anywhere.
00:32:31
Speaker
i mean there's and a sort of like There's an era of omission by choosing not to leverage new technologies sometimes as well. Yeah, you don't want to get sued for the missed comma.
00:32:42
Speaker
Right. Let the machines do it and they probably do a way better job than what ah humans can. Yeah. This is kind of an interesting
AI's Impact on Law Firm Models
00:32:52
Speaker
one. You worked at a law firm. You worked at a law firm.
00:32:55
Speaker
This is going to be a topic of a panel that we haven't heard yet. um But do you think that AI is going to really meaningfully disrupt the law firm business model. ah What's required for... It seems like something better has to emerge. Like there's some really great things about law firms and some partners give fantastic advice that are worth every penny of their $2,500 an hour.
00:33:19
Speaker
um But it seems like that business model is is ripe for disruption. Yeah, um so... How long have we been saying that?
00:33:31
Speaker
When you charge for something by the hour, yeah it means that efficiency is not going to be your friend. but So you can't be ah if you if you are more efficient, it hits your revenue numbers.
00:33:45
Speaker
You want tools to be more precise, but efficient? I'm not sure if ah you know the AMLA 100 is open to doing that. That said, that model is going to fundamentally change which means that you're not going to hear lawyers saying I signed or or businesses saying I signed a hundred million dollar deal listening to a robot lawyer no but um the the business model of the law firm is ripe for disruption It may not be the existing law firms, but new structures will emerge where input is not the metric, output is the metric.
00:34:22
Speaker
So a deal, $500,000 come what may, because all of the costs that go into that when you add AI plus human as a way to get the output done is far more predictable.
00:34:36
Speaker
um And you can run with more scale. ah You can only do what heck 40, 50, 60 hours a week, but add AI to the mix, you could do 300. three hundred Yeah, I think a lot of this um is gonna be in the hands of customers and clients.
00:34:53
Speaker
I worked very heavily in the exchange between ah corporations and outside counsel in terms of pricing and business models and so forth. I've sat across the table from chairs of the AMLA 50 and asked them flat out, what will it take for you to adopt a more holistic approach to alternative fee arrangements? And they just kind of looked at me and said, are you kidding?
00:35:16
Speaker
Like, why would we do that? and And there's no incentive. To Shashank's point, there's no incentive. So it has to be forced. um i just It wouldn't make business sense for them to do it. ah Maybe somebody cracks that nut, great.
00:35:29
Speaker
I think there are some smaller firms who do that. But when you look at the largest ones, we're talking, you know, the Kirklands and so forth, we're talking six to eight billion dollars of annual revenue. Are they going to carve that out to be more efficient? Absolutely not.
00:35:43
Speaker
are they going to do? It's either a volume game, which means they're cannibalizing something else. And right now, if you look at kind of where law firm work is going, is going to technology providers and alternative legal services providers and in-house legal departments.
00:35:56
Speaker
So they're already getting cannibalized and they're reacting to that by increasing their hourly rates and charging more hours. That is not sustainable. um But I still think it's going to take clients to force the issue on leveraging AI. And we'll be talking about this tomorrow. I have i have a nice question teed up for Joe.
00:36:13
Speaker
Not just leveraging AI, but I need you to show me, law firm, what's the benefit I'm getting from this? So if something cost me $50,000 without AI, it better cost me, I don't know, $10K without AI, $15K with AI.
00:36:26
Speaker
I think those kinds of conversations are going to have to be forced. and And the innovation here is in pricing. AI may be the driver doing it, but the end benefit to the customer is price.
00:36:39
Speaker
The moment you change the pricing model from an input to an output as a metric, it changes the realm of the game. A last substantive question for the two of you before sort of traditional closing questions.
00:36:55
Speaker
and You know, I mean, we talk about legal teams needing to maybe change their mindset, in-house legal teams needing to change a mindset around AI, or law firms need to be leveraging this and passing the savings on to their clients.
00:37:11
Speaker
um What responsibilities, though, do we have? mean This summit is called Beyond AI Hype, right? what What responsibilities do we have as tech providers or as vendors to making sure that adoption of AI isn't just sort of successful, but that it's also responsible and that it's sustainable?
00:37:32
Speaker
I think one is educating everyone on how AI works, the pros and cons of it, and what can and can't be done. um Second is being ah ethically responsible in how we train the AI and what it's able to do.
00:37:48
Speaker
I think these two are very important. And third is eventually to contribute to education to ensure that the next generation of people are ai ready. That is that is I think, important that we make the change not just for the people now, but for the coming generations as well, and ensuring that they're always future ready and future proof.
00:38:10
Speaker
I think as a ah seller into the market, the only thing I would add to that is transparency. um I've sat on a few different AI panels in the last two or three months, ah mainly to learn actually from the other panelists. And one theme has been consistent through the entire entirety of those panels, which is transparency. We want transparency.
00:38:30
Speaker
That's not a new concept in business. um But I think it's ah it's ah it's a really badly needed one, particularly in AI. How do you train your model? Where does the data sit? Those are not new concepts. ah You're privacy guy. yeah came from the privacy world. That's exactly the way that you talk about data and where it sits and how it flows. Governance. Exactly right.
00:38:48
Speaker
So I think that kind of transparency is going be valuable as well. Final set of questions for you. My traditional closing questions for the guests.
Personal Fulfillment and Influences
00:38:58
Speaker
Your favorite part of your day today For me, it is innovating and working with the team and just that energizes me a lot.
00:39:09
Speaker
It's amazing to see all the different ideas and how we can grow and what we can do next. I think that is amazing. And second is watching that joy i in the face of a customer when they say that I use SpotDraft and it really changed the way our legal department operates. It's the joy of building and showing value that really, really makes me happy.
00:39:34
Speaker
Mine's almost always about people. It's great to see everybody here from India. yeah I work here half a world away, so it's really nice to connect with everybody live. And the second one is I get to go watch my son play basketball in a game in about an hour, so I'm really looking forward to that. ah Well, I was going to say, should we have you guess the other one? Do you have a professional pet peeve?
00:39:59
Speaker
ah Yeah, for me it is... Wait, are you going guess mine? or that's that's what i was I was just thinking that could be kind of fun actually. I think bullshit.
00:40:13
Speaker
yeah Yeah. that's That's very high up upon on your radar. and The second one is lack of honesty and transparency. 100 percent.
00:40:24
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say those are two big pet. I think for you, it's not having information in a timely fashion. Yeah, for me, time is very important. and Second is, whenever the answer to any problem tends to be, or it takes more time and more money.
00:40:40
Speaker
I get that. Those are the only two things that are constraints. yeah ah Is there a book that you've read recently or that's been important in your career that you'd want to recommend to to the audience?
00:40:55
Speaker
I think for me, the transition from lawyer to founder, the book that made that happen for me was zero to one. I think it was foundational in more than one way as I still keep going back to that book.
00:41:08
Speaker
um And the second one is The Hard Thing About the Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. I think it's just... um You know, running a company is hard and you need to take a lot of hard decisions.
00:41:22
Speaker
Just getting that decision matrix done right. ah it's It's a great book too to read. It's almost you can't read it page to page. You just have to open the part that that's really problematic at this point and just read that one chapter and then close it back up.
00:41:37
Speaker
It's a good textbook. Yes. um Mine's Getting Naked by ah Peter Lecioni. Once I read the five dysfunctions of a team and my former manager at Facebook was really big on the lessons that come out of that that came out of that book.
00:41:52
Speaker
He wrote a second book called Getting Naked, which is about a management consulting company. And the the protagonist goes through a pretty amazing character arc in how he learns to navigate and push back on clients and customers.
00:42:06
Speaker
and now in the end that actually ends up getting him a lot more business and amazing satisfaction out of his work and it's something that i'm i'm hoping to take to our sales and customer success teams interesting yeah uh my final question for the two of you traditional closing question it's if you could look back on your days as a young lawyer both of you at at the firm or at a firm something that you know now that you wish that you'd known back then do not watch Suits and read so and and and read John Grisham and imagine your world is going to turn out like that. ah The reality of law is very different from the entertainment of law.
00:42:51
Speaker
So, young kids out there, please do not base your life decisions on books and movies. <unk>s In part, I went to law school and did litigation because of a few good men. So it's a good cautionary tale. yeah I think for me, it's I wish I would have known. and mean i don't know how realistic. I wish I would have known just what else was possible with a law degree. and Yeah, and everyone will go through their own journey around that. But I think if I had known, I would have had a little bit more intention around my path. But it is what it is. And I love where I am. so
00:43:24
Speaker
But I wish I would have little bit more on back then. Well, Akshay, Shashank, thank you so much for joining me for this episode of The Abstract here at our summit in San Francisco. This has been a lot of fun for me.
00:43:37
Speaker
Thank you for having us finally. Yeah. The first time both of you on camera together. Yeah. Hopefully not the last. We should do another one of these next year. Yeah, yeah absolutely. Sounds good. And to all of our listeners, thanks so much for tuning in. And we hope to see you next time.