Automating Legal Profession: The Vision and the Implications

Episode 81 Automating Legal Profession The Vision and the Implications with Ben Su of Capita

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Hessie Jones 

Hi. Today we’re talking about automation in the legal sector. AI has gained significant momentum in service professions, especially in the legal. And it has attracted lots of venture capital investment and has transformed traditional work flows. In 2023, 73% of legal professionals have said they planned on integrating AI into their legal work. The lawyers that have actually commented that these tools are becoming increasingly significant in their daily lives, it as the solutions are able to handle large amounts of data and analyze many of these complicated legal tasks. So venture capitalists are also heavily invested in AI legal tech startups. Last year alone, 2024, they saw the highest gains. Here we saw 58 deals in legal tech. With the total capital investment of $477 million, the appeal for V Cs lies in the fact that 44% of their legal work could actually be automated by these emerging AI tools. If you haven’t heard, startups like Harvey raise $100 million in their series C round, and it’s valued at $1.5 billion today. Hi. My name is Hessie Jones and welcome to Tech Uncensored. The implications for legal professions are significant. AI is reshaping traditional workflows. Even 70% of professionals say that they’re seeing the benefits from many of these AI power technologies. When it comes to research, when it comes to drafting, when it comes to document summarization. 

However, there are actual remains, some trepidation within the services industry. 25% of professional respondents see artificial intelligence as a threat.  

So Ben Su is a legal tech entrepreneur. He is the founder of Cathedral, which is the world’s first AI lawyer. He argues that the true potential for AI legal services goes beyond. Efficiency gains, and he envisions that AI will eliminate work close entirely and create this proactive, always on system that can solve legal problems before they actually happen. He actually contends that the legal industry is stuck in these outdated systems and the real opportunity lies in actually using AI to fundamentally reimagine what legal services can be so. While his vision seems a little bit more radical than what the market offers today, the trend towards AI adoption in this sector is fairly clear law firms. Departments not moving towards AI. Can risk falling behind as a AI begins to permeate? Not only this industry, but others as well. 

I’m pleased to welcome Ben Su to talk about his progressive views on AI and how we can revolutionize a legal profession. How does he envision his company in providing greater access? And efficiency for businesses and what will this mean for not only the legal profession, but the future of other professional services? Welcome, Ben. 

Ben Su 

Thank you hessie for having me on. 

Hessie Jones 

I’m I’m really looking forward to this conversation because you and I have talked about it and wow, some of your views are are enlightening. Let’s get started. Tell me a little bit about your back story and and why you as a lawyer have decided to venture into artificial intelligence and disrupt this profession. 

Ben Su 

Yeah, absolutely. So. My entrepreneurial journey actually started during undergrad. I was making some money from my side hustle as a. At one point I was actually generating more cash even than what I knew what to do with. After I paid my rent in cash. After I paid my food in cash, I had more cash. So that kind of got me into. Entrepreneurship, how fun it was. I get to, you know. Improve user experience with my tutor clients that were high school kids. And it was really fun. Afterwards, I went ventured into biotech. My under my undergrad was actually in biochemistry. I Co founded biotech startup Longstreet. We had a mini exit selling an IP to a pharma company. So that got me the entire view of how a company works from inception stage. To dealing with customers, clients. And all the way at the end. Selling its entire asset and everybody gets to use, but whatever that was left. So I realized at a young age that any meaningful commercial transactions or activities. Were actually they were actually built on legal system. Because contracts protect future expectations. So if you were to raise capital, if you were to sell an IP, everything had to be based on the legal system. And that got me interested in law. So I went into law. I studied law, my JDI University Ottawa, with the intention of not becoming a lawyer for the rest of my life. But becoming an entrepreneur and I wanted to know all the rules. There is to know in the legal system that would be relevant to operating a technology company. So I took IP law classes. I took corporate law securities law. Tax. I actually got a business and tax law scholarship from university Ottawa as well. And what I realized in law school was that. Legal contracts are essentially, if a then B logics and even legislation you can say they are just if A and B logics, but you know it’s much more complex than that because they have maybe thousands of if A and B logics. In the context of Income Tax Act, you probably have no less than 500,000. If A then B logics. So I said to myself, It seems to me that this if A and B logics can be automated with just traditional software, right? Because. You can argue in a way it’s mathematical reasoning or logical reasoning, right? And Fast forward to 2022. I was practicing law at a boutique tech firm here in Toronto. I rekindle my relationship with my lawsuit classmate, who took exactly the same classes as me who also had the intention of not becoming a lawyer. Entrepreneur. We Co-founded capital. The whole idea is we know the existing legal system is extremely outdated. People who want to access legal services or legal knowledge cannot afford them. Right. And people who are providing legal services, on the other hand, complain that they’re being underpaid, right? So if you talk to most of the junior lawyers, the associates working at law firms. Or even the auditing students who are struggling in Canada to find article in position that is paid at a livable wage. They are complaining a lot too. So I think there’s a huge gap. In terms of the way legal services are purchased. And the way legal services are delivered, I think that is an opportunity. For technology to step in. Therefore, I decided to venture into. Tech from my law career. 

Hessie Jones 

So tell me about the success that you passed so far in in terms of traction and capital raising. 

Ben Su 

Yeah, absolutely. Well, the the first product we launched after founding capital was capital formation product. So we essentially automated lawyers away from startup fundraising process. And well, I would say, you know, before we built that product, we had the fortune of being supported by some of the world’s best investors, including hyperplane VC, fresh founders and multiple exited founders. That gave us enough dry powder to build that capital formation automation product. So within 10 weeks of launching our product, at one point we were processing $71,000 per day. In time or so started fundraising just in the Greater Toronto area alone. We will see more deal flows than any. Android Networks or incubators in Canada and that quickly got us on the radar of multiple investment organizations, including VC and Android Networks. Long story short. Q 2/20/24 we were preempted into another round of capital raising led by. Drive capital and also some of our former. Investors from previous round doubled down on us in. And this gave us, I’d say, a boost to become even more ambitious. So instead of just automating the capital raising part of legal OPS in the startup life. We said to ourselves, why don’t we automate away the entire legal stack for precede and cease stage company? So this is capital current. The the tip point version of Kappa is we’re building the AI lawyer for startups. 

Hessie Jones 

  1. So let’s let’s talk about the current legal profession, because obviously what you’re building is is probably the future and it’s current, but it’s the future and we we can argue that many, many legal services. Will not get to where you’re at, probably in the next year, so. From a task perspective. If we see that AI can impact the level can impact the level legal profession today significantly, they talk about contract analysis. It can reduce your error rate by 90%. Paralegals. They can automate it up to 40% of their tasks. As well as legal assistance, junior lawyers and it could process documents 50 times faster than manual processing. But you argue that. AI improvements are a dead end. So tell me a little bit about this and why you believe that optimizing existing workload is inefficient. For for true innovation in your field.

Ben Su 

Yeah, absolutely. So we actually have done quite a bit of customer discovery interviews. So we took a first principal based approach in understanding what people. Liked or disliked about legal services instead of just, you know, trying to replicate what the law firms or the lawyers are doing with that AI? And I think like. The the law firms and lawyers, what they’re missing out on is. The opportunity to talk to their customers in a wide in a traditional YC styled customer Discovery interview, right? For example, what we found, I was actually quite surprising to me because I was the person delivering legal services to my clients when I was practicing law. But what I found was that customers don’t want a better lawyer. They don’t. They don’t. They have no interest in getting access to the. $1000 per hour. Bay St. Law firm partner. What they want is actually a thought partner that will help them along the journey of building their startup. Coming up with innovations in the business model or structuring their equity so that their vision would be aligned. For the families, right? And also I think where the illegal industry is getting things wrong is that. If you look if you Google Neo tech startups, almost 99% of them are about making document processing or review faster, but those efficiency gains. Have never been transferred to the end user. The client legal fees are increasing just like everything else in the economy. Right. I think an average partner rate at a tier one law firm is probably approaching 1500 U.S. dollar per hour or even 2000. Right. So. The way we’re thinking about. Reinventing legal services is about listening to the customers on what they want. They don’t want. For example, shareholder agreement. I don’t need an instant generation of a shareholder agreement for my Co founders, but rather I want to talk to someone that can call on the phone. To discuss. Hey, what would be a good way to incentivize everyone to work hard on the startup? A long time. So that’s the way we are differentiating ourselves from the law firms and lawyers. 

Hessie Jones 

It’s funny because. Legal advice is so important, and yet people who are paying for it are very conscious of every hour, every minute. That that’s needed for that lawyer to give them exactly what they want. So as much as they’re valued, it’s it’s also a big risk to to small companies or companies who. Just can’t afford legal services. They know that they need them as a partner, but but do you believe that currently the value is up not equal to the price that they’re paying? 

Ben Su 

Yeah. Ia 1000% agree with the premise. I even had founders telling me that I hate talking to my lawyer because in my head I’m I have this clock telling me that for every sentence I’m I’m saying to my lawyer, I’m getting billed for it. Even I don’t even tell me. I hate even emailing my lawyer because for that e-mail I’m getting billed at least for 50 minutes. For it, so that actually discourages. Communication between the client and the lawyer. And why would I need to? Well, that would need to pour outcomes. Right. So. Anyways, kind of like back to the point. Is that we feel legal services. The way that it has been delivered and is currently delivering. People are not getting the value out of it. 

Like for example like we actually had to fix a number of mistakes. That the law firms made for our users before we onboarded them. Part of the reason I think is this. I think when you’re startup, you walk into the big St. law firms office. You may get the first half an hour of consultation from a partner, but the people that end up executing. On the legal services that would be delivered to. Would be the first year and 2nd year associates. Right. So they’re still learning their ways around the legal world? That’s number. #2 is that these associates, they’re extremely overworked and underpaid. Right. So you can just imagine the type of energy. That would be going on in a workplace environment. #3 is that? These lawyers, they’ve never sat in the driver’s seat. Of building a company launching a product raising capital. So it’s. Difficult for them to have the empathy. In the challenges that the clients face. I I think. Outside of technology, that’s a unique advantage that capital has is that we have two lawyers and one machine learning engineers, and we all had our previous career in building and selling companies. So we bring quite a bit of empathy from the founder perspective to building the product. 

Hessie Jones 

Interesting. I I also see like your company actually just. Creating an alternative path, an alternative business model for for legal services and as you say, if there is a disparity within existing legal services where where the juniors are the ones that are managing the clients for the most part that they’re not getting the value. And they’re overworked. Then there is. There is an opportunity for for automation to reduce that workload, increase value. But as you say, another part of it is passing on the savings. So talk to me about how. How you see? A business, a new type of business model that that’s going to come out of legal services in the future, at least what we’re doing right now. 

Ben Su 

So the traditional or the typical classical negate startup is. They sell tools to lawyers, and there’s a lot of great companies actually. The founding advisor for Capital was a founder that created the first AI generative. AI company in the legal tech. Space. So we actually have a very in depth understanding of how services from the tech companies are delivered to lawyers and how lawyers are delivering those services. To clients. And I think like one of the most memorable lines that I I heard from our founding advisor. Was that clients don’t care about what tool you’re using at the end of the day, they care about the outcome and how much you’re charging for that outcome, right? So if you were to think about that. A little deeper. The way we feel that the outcome could be improved is not to generate faster document or or cheaper. Documents, but rather is to have an always on proactive. A thought partner that the founder can speak to. Even just to brainstorm some ideas. For example, in the fintech space, we recently chatted with this group of founders that are building. Online marketplace for use electronics and it’s a very clever business model and they actually use one of the Big Bay Street law firms as their legal counsel, but. To my surprise that nobody from that Big Bay Street law firm identified that there’s a money service business license issue with the business model because. By having an always on top partner. In the journey of a founder building their. Building their business model, building their product, it could raise quite a bit of questions earlier on. Before it becomes too late. 

To change the the direction of the ship. Right. So that’s how we’re imagining services to be delivered. It’s not like it’s not about documents. Reactive. You ask me for this SAS agreement. I’ll give it back to you. Tomorrow. It’s more about hey. The most optimal way for you to generate revenue for your technology should be ABC and D. 

Hessie Jones 

So what does that do to the current system or like from professional consulting perspective, it is based on retainer or hourly rate. How does that change? 

Ben Su 

Well, I think house changing first and foremost in the entrepreneurials in the entrepreneurs world. Pricing uncertainty. Is probably one of the biggest fear factor. For clients to use someone’s consulting service or legal advice. And because of that, it’s that pricing uncertainty brings anxiety. Be even more amplified in the early stage startup world. Right. So what ended up happening is a lot of questions that should be asked. In the beginning. Were were not asked and that resulted into, say, catastrophic outcomes later on. So the way I like to think about how it’s changing the industry. I’m biased towards the users, not the service providers, because at the end of the day. I’ve been taught that you know your users perspective should occupy 99% of the bandwidth of your thought process. And that that is what I’m thinking is like I imagine that if Capita didn’t have the two lawyers on the team. Just like say, 3 software engineers with no legal background. How difficult things could have been? Along our journey. 

Hessie Jones 

It’s interesting. I want to talk to you more about the technical side of of artificial intelligence because as you develop this further within your business. You talk about the fact that AI isn’t about making lawyers faster, it’s about making legal problems disappear. And you said that before anyone has to think about them but. As you know, the technology is still in this predictive AI state that that’s more about auto complete than it is about. Truly understanding the way humans think in the way humans process the information. So it it lacks a genuine comprehension about what’s happening. How? How do you, how do you square that with your proactive vision of problem solving. But what do you think needs to happen before AI to get there. 

Ben Su 

Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s actually relevant to one of the LinkedIn post I made following the release of Deep Seek and also the market crash. Reaction to deep seek. And I want to quote Alex card from Palantir. LL ends are commodities. If you use chat, EBT or even deep seek or claw to do some of the highly specialized or deep expertise type of work. You can guarantee a negative outcome, especially in legal. The number of ChatGPT mistakes that we had to fix for users. It’s it’s. It would be surprising to you like I actually have examples of. Founders closing down their startup because of the agreement that they use for CHEAT SHEET for their founder share split. Resulted in. You know, a very catastrophic outcome that they had to close down the startup. 

Hessie Jones 

So here I just want to clarify that your clients are actually going to Chat GPT and prompting them to give them either legal advice or what legal templates for agreements, et cetera. 

Ben Su 

Correct. So before we unboarded them, they were already using the generic LMS to solve their legal OPS problems, right? And they generate a shareholder agreement using chatbot. And the biggest problem with those chatty generated legal agreements is that it doesn’t have the specific context of the user. So I’ll give you an example in in a venture backable startup. It’s common for founders in their shareholder agreements to include this founder reverse vesting clause. Right. Just in case if one of the founders had to leave and go work for Google for half $1,000,000 a year, that is not fair for that founder to take away 50% of the shares. Of the company, right? Because it would be a 50% of debt weight on the CAP table for precede company and that’s that’s going to be extremely demotivating to the founder whose remaining on building the company and hustling hard. 

 

Right. So that’s kind of like the example without going into the details of like the case, that’s an example I have seen how? Messed up a startups journey. So kind of back to your point, I think the opportunity here is using the commoditized LMS. As startups, there’s a huge opportunity for the so-called GPT wrappers, right? And the idea is applying deep expertise. Of the profession. You don’t even need to fine tune the model, just purely based on prompt engineering based on the understanding of the industry and the requirements of the user. I think there’s a huge. Potential of value to be created in terms of automating professional services. 

Hessie Jones 

Yeah, talk. Me about that a little bit because. There you you have to go beyond the the the data that’s provided by some of these generative models or by uploading, let’s say your own data in order for it to. To train or what? 

Ben Su 

So we actually don’t train anything at all we use. Existing commercially available LNS as comprehension tools and communication tools. Right. So we want to, for example, in order for system to understand the context. Of. A user’s startup we would need to ask a series of questions. That actually mimics the intake process at a law firm, right? And the beauty about what we’re building is that we pick the lowest hanging fruit in the legal industry. We pick the market segment that is highly commoditized or highly standardized, right? If some lawyers would even tell you. The templates that you would get from Cooley. Or else there. They probably look identical for a precede startup company, right? So. We saw this as the lowest hanging fruit for a small startup like capital to demonstrate that AI can automate quite a bit of the workflow for the founders, in terms of their legal OPS. So we actually don’t use any like customer data or pre pre-existing data to train anything at all, but rather. We do very. I’d say we do heavy lifting on the prompt engineering side of things. Right. So it could almost. It could almost make an analogy saying that that Lum you can think of the Lum that we’re using as a. PhD level reasoning person. 

Now we take that person. We try to teach that person. This is how corporate law works and we set very strict boundaries. On. The outcome should be based on the input. Right. And I would say the biggest difference between us and. 

Legal LM foundational model is that. We are extremely focused on the narrow. Practice sector known as emerging. Practice. It sounds complicated, but it really is not. 

Hessie jones 

So what you’re basically saying is that because you don’t have to rely on a lot of these huge data sets, but the your the promise that you actually create. A very focused on the specific needs and potential like issues. That your target market faces right and and through through that process you’re able to get the data that you need in order to. Provide. Some kind of prescriptive outcome for them. 

Ben Su 

Right. And I think this is unique to the market segment that we’re attacking. I’ll give an example. For a single piece of agreement, just say the shareholder agreement, we could have 40 pages of prompt. Instructing the AI on what to do. Right. And so I would say I don’t see the way we’re building this product right now to be transferable in building, say at M and A. Automation tool. It’s not going to work, but in our specific sector, that emerging technology practice. I think it’s the right tool for the right application. 

Hessie Jones 

Talk to me a little bit about the fact that you’re focused on the your clients what? What are they saying in terms of outcomes and value and and also the price that you’re paying because your business model is totally different? 

Ben Su 

Yeah, absolutely. I I think. First and foremost, our users are appreciating the fact that. We are building a tool not only to provide reactive legal services. For example, hey, I need to launch a. Give me Atos or master service agreement so I can go collect some money and make sure my liabilities are protected in a generic way. But rather they we use our tool to come up with strategies. In terms of what is the best way to execute this transaction? Right. So they appreciated that thought partner nature of our tool. Always on 24/7. And at the end, we do have human lawyers in the loop to sign off on documents, right? But as I mentioned earlier in the sector in this emerging technology sector. Everything is quite commoditized. So it’s which makes it easier relatively easier to scale. And in terms of cost, I would say this. I’ve I I previously talked to a founder who raised 3 million USD for his. He called it a seat round and the legal bill that he received was. $150,000. But I. I was quite surprised about that because I mean, from a percentage perspective, yes, $150,000 of legal bill on a $3,000,000 investment is not that much, right. But. I know that it’s a pretty the company was new, so they had no historical transactions or liabilities that you needed to do a comprehensive. Of you know, two week legal due diligence. On right. So I think for us we could go. 30X. 40. 50X or even like a 1.100 X more affordable for that founder, right? So that but again like kind of just like bring things in perspective that’s an outlier because not every day you you would see a company raising a $3,000,000 seat round but you have the recent grad from University of Waterloo who want to start an AI. Company or they want to start B to B marketplace. These people they do not have the resources to pay $500.00 an hour to a junior associate here in kitchen Waterloo. 

Hessie Jones 

Yeah. Well, I would also argue that for those that are raising a seed round, they will still not have the resources to pay that legal bill. Fact they wait on the outcome of the race in order to use some of that to pay for the legal fees that they incurred. To get that that seed. So it’s it does take a toll and so that that segues me into the next question about how lucrative this industry really is. There are people law school because they know at some point they’re going to make the big bucks. 

 I just did a bit of research and said that and it said that the average lawyer salary in Canada. Is about 145,000 per year and they can that they’re making about $75 per hour. So speak to me. About how a service like yours. Benefits the legal profession and if you say it’s disrupting the business model. What? What implication does that have from from the your perspective about mitigating any job replacement risks that really improving the business overall? 

Ben Su 

Yeah, absolutely. I I think automation is never a 0 sum game. With existing professions, I mean, you and I, we previously discussed how automation agriculture. Did not make farmers starve, but actually fed the society with the level abundance that we’ve never experienced before as a human species. And I think. The same thing in the AI revolution as well. I actually want to go deeper in terms of dissecting how lawyers are paid. So you actually reference the average income, but I I’m assuming the medium income will probably be different. Why? Because you have base strip law firm partners that are making. Millions each year. But my classmates, they are working. Ad to 100 hours a week. Yeah, they may be generating $150,000 of salary each year, but if you were to actually. Plug in the number of hours they work as lawyers in the denominator. It’s actually not that high. Like they probably I actually say to new. Undergrad students that want to go into law, I say hey on a per hour basis. The realistic expectation for you is that you’re not going to be a top earner in a society. You probably be better off working as. An engineer for software company, right. And so I I just wanted to kind of like clarify that and also I think that this is something that people, lawyers and law firms need to realize. Yeah. Like they’re too focused on the high margin generating transactions. For example, say M and a everybody loves M and a work. Why? You can collect hundreds if not millions. Of dollars of revenue from those type of work. But there are a smaller law firms that are thinking, hey, I want to invest my resources into the startup sector. Because I want to be first in line. With that startup decides to raise a Series A. That’s when I can, you know, charge that fat margin legal bill. So I think the incentives are extremely misaligned. Currently. Why? Because you know, as a law firm that the startups and negative margin business, but you want to, you know, get those founders on your client list so that you can charge them more money later on when they raise a serious a. And just imagine how that misaligned incentive would translate into user experience. Right. So anyway, that’s just like kind of like my rant. Back to your point. The way I think about this is that the total addressable market for legal services for corporate legal services would be a lot bigger if the cost goes lower. In fact, I think there would be more entrepreneurs in the world if. Access to legal. Access to legal knowledge and services. Become more easy or become more, I’d say. 

And just think about how what Shopify did to make entrepreneurship easier, we think. An automated legal services that would be affordable and more effective than the traditional human legal services. We feel it can greatly. Entrepreneurship in a society. 

Hessie Jones 

So I want to touch on that a little bit because you’re going to have a lot of critics and I’m sure you’ve spoken to a lot of lawyers, legal firms who who argue that the nuanced nature of legal work makes it. Makes it more resistant to complete automation. From your conversations with them, what was your feeling about why they were resistant? They didn’t think the legal profession could be, really. Automated in the way that you’re seeing it. 

Ben Su 

Yeah. I I I actually have got into heated discussions in public with lawyers. I definitely sympathize their perspective. I think it’s never a good thing to hear that. You know your job could be automated in a certain stage of the societal development. Right. Think about the the the taxi drivers didn’t feel good when Uber came around. Or the the textile workers, or you’re seeing it right now with the, you know, United States, the workers. At the ports they are resisting adoption of automation. 

This is what I have to. I think it’s a great a good for the society. Why? Because think about the fourth year engineering student. Who wants to start a company based on his capstone project? But you know, but his way in whether he should pay a $5000 founders package from one of the base real estate. Or spend that $5000 on getting some. You know, computing resources. To build his model, right? So I think it’s for greater good. First second I think. Lawyers need to think about. Or lawyer needs to stop being comfortable with the fact that most people who require legal services cannot afford legal services. And. There are ways for law firms to increase their revenue streams, right? In the US, in fact, we’re seeing quite a bit of. Law firms adopting. Automations in terms of like client intakes, right? Or even in kitchen Waterloo, one of my mentors who’s a big time tech lawyer here in the region he adopted. Only isolation to answer client. What’s? Right. So we’re seeing, you know, open minded lawyers adopting automations, but again. There’s going to be people that would be thinking about like the accountants. Refuse to use spreadsheets. Yeah, I just it’s an inevitable part of technological revolution. It’s just it’s going to be extremely difficult for them to. Justify the values that they’re delivering to their clients based on the buildable hourly rate that they’re charging. 

Hessie Jones 

Yeah, I think the value the value is still there. But how it’s delivered is going to to be vastly different from what you’re saying, but I think the other thing that that needs to happen, and this has to be in lockstep with industry, is the education system. Needs to prepare. Their graduates for what they are to expect in the new legal realm. How do you, as someone who’s gone to law school? 

And based on your experience and based on. The current understanding of what to expect in the legal profession. Should the education system. Change. 

Ben Su 

Yeah, I actually think there’s a huge flaw within the education system. Take myself for example. 

I actually got decent grades in law school and I won national awards on my essays criticizing Supreme Court decisions on healthcare funding. But I. Was one of the students that struggled to find an article in position. And I also know that audacious students in Canada. They’re extremely underpaid and being taken advantage of, and there’s even examples of article students working for free. For law firms just to get that certification at the end that they did their article right. So I think the current system as it is, is extremely unfair, and those lawyers ought to be ashamed of themselves. For using free labor from an article student who wants to become a lawyer. And get their law license. And I actually think AI is a way to actually level the playing field. So we talked about how recent college engineering grads can become 10X developers. With 10 years of experience in terms of the cost that they can output, I’m also bullish on the fact that the young law students who are able to build the power of AI and tools. To maybe establish their sole practice. And provide highly valuable legal services to their clients, whether it be criminal law or employment law, immigration law. I think it’s. I’m actually bullish on the point that AI is helping the small guys who don’t have the resources, who who don’t have access to lepotism connections. At the law firms. I think it’s making the world more fair. Rather than unfair. 

Hessie Jones 

I love that. I love. I love that you’re you’re trying to disrupt in that way. That democratizes it. But you’re also conscious, conscious of the fact that the system has to change. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that that positions will be replaced or displaced. You’re you’re basically saying you need. It add AI to your toolkit. Be forward thinking and be able to and be able to use it in the business that allows you to create more access for clients. Improve your. I mean, they don’t have to improve the bottom line, but they could just change the model so that more clients. At a lower rate will bait will still improve revenue outcomes for for their companies? 

Ben Su 

Yeah. And I think it’s. I actually I work for a boutique law firms and I know it’s extremely difficult to operate a, you know, profitable sole practice or or boutique law practice, right. And I think that if you become more effective, not just more efficient but more effective with the service that you’re delivering. To your client as a law firm or as a lawyer. You can. The the entire 10 total addressable market size for legal services industry can be greatly increased. Will be more people that want to start their. There going to be more people that want to invest in companies, right, not less. And the only times if history serves. As an example, the only times where you’re seeing massive unemployment rates. Is because of. Or economic macroeconomic policies. Not because of technological advancement, right? Think about the massive unemployment rates in the recent say 4 decades or five decades. It. It was a result of monetary policies and physical policies from the government. But Silicon Valley automating, say e-commerce with with Shopify and Amazon. In fact, what we’ve seen is more people are creating jobs, right? And if you were to time travel back to the 1800s. And you talk. The people who were worried about automation taking away job positions. And you try to explain to them, you know this guy named Jake Paul or Logan Paul, their YouTube influencers, they. Have. Idea. What profession a YouTube influencer is about? 

Hessie Jones 

And I think what AI is going to do for the society is, yes, you can see some positions being eliminated for sure. But there’s also going to be new positions created that we can’t even imagine of right now. 

Mm. I agree with. I still remember when, honestly, the turn of the the year 2000. When I decided I was going to leave, I was going to leave traditional advertising in direct mail and TV and radio and do digital. Had no idea what I was doing. Like we were learning as we went. We had to learn about double click back then, which wasn’t even pop by Google. 

We had. Had. I mean, there are new professions like UX UI that were created. Websites were very new, people were making money hand over fist on websites. And so you’re right. We have to be open to the fact that new opportunities are going to be created that we. We can never imagine. So. So thank you. So. That’s all we have time for today and I know we ran over about this incident. A truly enlightening conversation. We’ll be watching to. How fast professional services progress in this? Increasingly, I guess in an AI landscape and I  Look forward to actually seeing how you and your company contribute to this evolving. Legal profession. So thank you again for coming. 

Ben Su 

Thank you for the opportunity to chat. 

Hessie Jones 

No problem. And for our audience, if you have topics that you want us to explore, please e-mail us at communications at altitudeaccelerator.ca Tech. UN centered is powered. Produced by altitude accelerator and. We are hosted on Spotify. You can also find us wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time I’m Hessie Jones and I invite you to continue to stay curious and to be inspired. 

Host Information

Hessie Jones is an Author, Strategist, Investor and Data Privacy Practitioner, advocating for human-centred AI, education and the ethical distribution of AI in this era of transformation.

She currently serves as the Innovations Manager at Altitude Accelerator. She provides the necessary support for Altitude Accelerator’s programs including Incubator and Investor Readiness. She will be the liaison among key stakeholders to provide operational support and ultimately drive founder success.

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