A.I. Tools for Estates and Trust Lawyers: What You Need to Know 

[00:00:00] Mallory Hendry: Hello everyone and welcome. I'm Mallory Hendry, Content Specialist Manager with Canadian Lawyer. Thank you for joining us for today's webinar, Understanding and Using AI Tools for the Estates and Trust Lawyer. Today we're joined by Well Partners, Kimberly Whaley and Brian Gilmartin, Hull & Hull LLPs Ian Hull and Susanna Popovic-Montag and Doug Higgins of Council.ai. They're going to cover a lot of ground today, including a review of available AI tools and the various use cases for them in the day-to-day of their respective practices. At the end of the presentation, our panelists will participate in a question and answer period, so be sure to type any questions you have into the Q&A box within the webinar software. I'll turn things over to our hosts now to begin the presentation. Take it away, Kim.

[00:00:48] Kimberly Whaley: Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining Susanne and Doug. Brian and me. Just briefly, I'm going to go through the roadmap for today's webinar. Our objective in this panel discussion is to demystify the artificial intelligence wave that we're in the midst of and that's going to flourish. As well, we want to break down all of the available relevant AI tools that we know of into simple, understandable components to learn what it actually means for lawyers in our practice area. We're going to look at a few notable tools that are out there, Co-Counsel from Thomson Reuters, Lexis Plus from LexisNexis, and Otter.ai, a transcription and summary tool. And we're also going to address what kind of tasks could be automated or accelerated by the use of AI and the impact on our practices. And we're going to talk about strategies for mitigating risk and compliance. And finally, some practical tips or basic steps on how you can begin to take advantage of some of these tools in your everyday practices. With that said, over to you, Susanna.
 

[00:01:59] Suzana Popovic-Montag: Thank you. Oh, sorry. Technical difficulties right at the outset. Thanks very much, Kim, and welcome, Brian. We're very glad that you could be here to join us. Ian Hall needs no introduction, of course, and we're very pleased to have Doug Higgins here from Council AI. Doug is actually the Chief Innovation Officer at Council AI, and he's going to provide us with some illustrations of some actual hands-on AI tools and practice. And so with that introduction, we will start with a little bit of a discussion about us as lawyers who are managing busy practices, and particularly Kim and Brian, as the leaders of your firm. What outcomes are you looking to achieve with your AI?
 

[00:02:51] Ian Hull, LSM: Sorry hang on, sorry Kim. We're just going to just switch that around a little bit if that's okay. I'm just going to start with a couple of opening comments and then we'll come back to some of the next breakdowns. So what we want to, as you say Kim, we want to try to talk about demystifying but we also need to I think put some thought to just what exactly AI tools are all about in our practice and where we're going. With Doug here today, he's going to give us a hands-on demonstration. Your company, Doug, I know does training for lawyers in AI tools. What I sort of look at it from this standpoint, and not just for estate lawyers, but the AI tools always, from my perspective, get broken down as follows. You have to have a lawyer involved at the start of any task. You can use the tool. If you are willing to and proficient to assist you in the actual task itself, and then the lawyer has to be there at the back end. So this concept of inferior work product coming out of AI is simply, that makes no sense to me. I mean, we all work day to day as lawyers, and we do not release work product without our supervision. So maybe the tool is doing things that we would have other lawyers doing, or staff, or sometimes other clerks doing. But it doesn't change the fact that the buck stops here. The lawyer is at the start of the task, the middle is being done in a delegated form, and happens to be an AI tool, and the production of whatever work product is done by the lawyer on a supervised basis. So if that's the reality of what we do anyway, I see this as an opportunity as opposed to anything else. And the solutions come from this. We, as a profession, lose tremendous hours in a day. It's a reality. The write-downs on WIPP are a reality, especially from a standpoint of a solicitor who is literally often doing a lot of work product on fixed-fee basis. So what do we do about correcting associates' work? correcting clerks work, new lawyers getting up to speed, all of that is typically lost time. And so the solution is really to get fewer wasted hours, to increase our lawyer value at the moment in time of the task being assigned to us by a client and producing the results that the client has asked for. So the innovation really comes down to that. Now, there's lots of great data on this, and we're not going to get too deep into that, but the data does drive this a little bit, and that there are literally thousands of dollars in savings that are available with quality, closed system AI tools. And Doug, I know you'll get into some of that, what we mean by that, but the key is that we're not entering into a practice of law on chat GPT and going, sending our work questions and sending our names of our clients into the internet. I mean, it's as simple as that. And so if we're working in a closed system, a safe closed system, the AI tool, and this is the simplest it is, the engine is driven by things like ChatGPT, but it's in a closed safe system. So if we're looking at that and looking at where we can create value to ourselves, but most importantly, to the clients. It's the client service business we're in. So where do we exceed expectations of the client when we keep efficiencies and when we can keep time and energy to our work product more efficient? So the last thing is this, and we were just, I was at a recent conference on AI, and one of the really cool, like, there's a couple of closed system tools out there. Thomson Reuters has one. LexisNexis has one. We'll talk a little bit about that. But really cool is. They've done a lot of data searching and the U.S. is obviously, as typically the case, way ahead of us. 80% of the lawyers that were surveyed in the last six months on AI say that AI is going to have a huge impact on their practice. 20% said they're going to do something about it in the next two years. So what we want to do today is show you that it's time to start doing it now, working with the products that exist now, so it becomes a habit. And as the tool grows, you're going to be able to grow with it. And that's where the finish and the point is, is that we want to go from our lawyer, task, lawyer. And the task tool will always grow and move and be something that we can learn to use better, like a good associate and a good clerk and a good assistant. But and that's not to say the tool is just for them. But that kind of delegation is something that we need to get better at with enhanced tools like this. So I'm going to stop there. And I do think we want to spend some time today looking at precisely where it fits in exactly to the estate's practice and taking away some of the friction points that we all suffer through. So I'll send this back to Suzana to go to the next question.
 

[00:08:36] Suzana Popovic-Montag: Sure. And I think, Ian, you actually answered the question that I initially lobbed out there, which is, you know, what is it that we're looking to achieve with our AR strategy? And certainly at our firm, it is about increasing efficiencies. It is about, you know, better servicing the clients. If we can do more with less time and at a lesser rate or less expense to the client, then the hope is that we'll have happier clients who will be more willing to ultimately pay their bills. And so... being able to draw on the efficiencies that come from using these tools is really the only hope. This isn't about creating a situation where we're going to replace lawyers or that we're going to reduce the number of lawyers we need. It's simply about doing things in a more efficient fashion. And so as we, you know, sort of look at these tools and discuss our strategies and how we're going to implement it, I just wanted to ask Kim, Brian, and you, Ian, as well, how is it that you build time? in your busy practices to actually learn how to use these tools. And I know Kim and Brian, your firm is certainly using some of the same things that we are. How is it that you find the time to do that in addition to running your busy practices?
 

[00:09:49] Kimberly Whaley: Go ahead, Brian.
 

[00:09:51] Bryan Gilmartin: I'm lucky in that I find it incredibly fascinating. And so for me, I've just, I guess, dove headfirst into all of it. And I find it incredible in terms of how it transforms your practice and the approach you take to your practice day to day. The tools that are out there, and we'll go through them, and Doug, I'm sure, will do a great job of explaining how they work. Really? do transform the way you approach your day-to-day practice and quite frankly really it really streamlines it to the to the to the point where you are able to take on a lot more than you otherwise otherwise can which and and in relatively short order yes we've been using these tools but we've we've only really taken them on recently i can say in the short amount of time that we've been doing it the the difference it makes in terms of keeping on top of your you know your day-to-day tasks and what needs to get done and what needs to get done quickly because we all know that we always get put into those rush situations it's just a lot easier a lot more efficient to approach them when you have these tools available.
 

[00:11:02] Kimberly Whaley: yeah I know I think I would add even at the outset the consultation process before you're even retained by a client that consultation process prospective clients often want to send you documents to look at for the purposes of that initial meeting, which is difficult for a lawyer because not retained, you're not going to give advice or give an opinion. But often those documents help facilitate the discussion. So if there's a download of documents right before a consult, getting through them, understanding the gist of them, it takes a bit of time. But we found with our use of co-counsel, uh the Thomson Reuters product I mentioned earlier, it can streamline and give you sort of a summary that you can start your consult off with and that saves time right at the get-go. And so that's just an example of a tool that can lessen the burden at your initial consult.
 

[00:12:11] Suzana Popovic-Montag: Absolutely. Ian, did you have anything to add to that?
 

[00:12:15] Ian Hull, LSM: No, let's roll our sleeves up and get into some demonstrations to sort of see this. And we can pick up some questions at the end if we need to. And thanks for starting to send in the questions and answers. We'll try to manage those as we go along, too.
 

[00:12:27] Suzana Popovic-Montag: Okay, so I'll turn it over to Kim to take us into some of the demos.
 

[00:12:33] Kimberly Whaley: Okay, so we're going to look to Doug for some of this. and in approaching some of the day-to-day tasks that lawyers in our practice areas frequently see that we know already can be accelerated by the use of AI. Doug, can you help us by starting with, for example, evidence that we regularly seek on disclosure, for example, medical records in the context of an estate litigation file? Can you provide some insight and guidance on the approach to the disclosure and then using the records?
 

[00:13:10] Doug Higgins: Certainly, Kim. And first off, let me say it's my pleasure to be here. I'm just going to go ahead and share my screen and just kind of show everybody at the top level. How do these actually roll out at the firm level? How are people using these? So if you can just give me a confirmation, you can see my screen purple here. OK, so as Kim had said, one of the things that both of your firms in your practice areas see quite often is the involvement of medical records. And for any of our audience members out there who similarly received this in the practice, we're usually talking about medical records that come in not, you know, dozens of pages. We're talking usually hundreds or thousands. And they can be really, really challenging documents to navigate. So one of the things that the AI tools do quite well is we can feed in a complex set of medical records. And in this case, what I've done is I've given instructions to the AI and I have said, I want you to look at these medical records. identify the different medical conditions that this person, this fictional deceased person, was experiencing. And I actually want the AI to go and sort them based on their ability to affect an individual's cognitive ability. Then I'm given kind of directions. Here's how I want you to present the data. I want this in the form of a numbered list or with separated categories. And you can see that instruction that I've given here. And I'm just going to scroll down a bit. I'm just going to expand this out here. You can see here the results that come out from an AI tool. And what we're getting is first at the top level, I've given the instruction of saying, look, because I'm looking at this from the angle of how... Somebody in one of your firms might approach this. First and foremost, I want to be looking at how do these medical issues affect this person's capacity? I want it to highlight issues that have to do with Alzheimer's disease, dementia, diminished capacity from other medical issues. And what you can find is that the AI tools are very, very quick to identify kind of these key fact points. Here it's pulling out an MMSE score. It's identifying where somebody had gone through a Montreal cognitive assessment, and it's giving the scores and dates of all this. And so this can make approaching what can be really, really difficult documents and time-consuming documents, it can shrink down the amount of human resources that you're investing in a task that sometimes can be difficult to explain to clients why that might take five hours, 10 hours to do. And we can shrink that down to a size that's manageable and justifiable.
 

[00:16:01] Ian Hull, LSM: So, Doug, just the last point on this, and then I know Suzana's got the next question for you. With this, though, it's not just taking you through a chronology. It's taking you to the documents, too, right?
 

[00:16:14] Doug Higgins: Yeah. And so, Ian, it's a good point. I mean, it's one of those things. You were talking about this idea of human in the loop. We always want to be checking, you know, where is this information being drawn from? And so the different platforms do approach this in different ways. So this system that you're seeing on the screen here, this is the tool from LexisNexis. They call this LexisPlus. And the way that they address, you know, where information is coming from, at the very top of all the answers, they tend to show you the name of the document that it's being pulled from. And so this way, you know, when you're pulling information out, you have the ability to go back and check this. One of the things that makes this a bit different from Thomson Reuters approach, for example, and I'll show this in one of the later examples, is Thomson Reuters has decided to go the way of making this interactive where the system actually is giving digital footnotes that you can click on. You can navigate directly to the document. Lexis has taken the approach of saying we want to name the document where the information is coming from. We want to identify the paragraph it's coming from, but there isn't necessarily that interactive quality. And again, I mean, I think it really depends on how a practitioner wants to use the tools. There's advantages to both approaches. And, you know, I'm not taking any sort of position on the quality of any of these tools. Like I really just want to show what's available on the marketplace today, what they can do with today's technology.
 

[00:17:44] Kimberly Whaley: So Doug, in these medical records that you're looking at, are you... Are you coming up with a list of search words that are relevant to your practice area so that you are getting the right ingredients or how does it work?
 

[00:17:58] Doug Higgins: Look, Kim, it's a really good question, because I think people are used to using kind of these Boolean search terms that have been how we've interacted with computers for the last 20 years. And this is beginning to change that a bit, because I think. One of the things that people who are new to AI tools, what they might not appreciate is we can speak to these as though we were giving instructions to a summer student, an articling student. And so at the very top of the screen here, you can see I've really just in plain language typed out, OK, here's what I want you to do with these documents. Here's what these documents are. And as a lawyer, what I might even do is add in some information about, you know, why am I looking for this information? I might add on to this. instruction at the top saying, you know, I represent a certain client, their position is X, and, you know, these are the outcomes they want from the litigation. And that can further target the results that we're getting out of the AI system.
 

[00:18:58] Suzana Popovic-Montag: Thanks a lot, Doug. That's a really illustration of litigation and how we can use it in the litigated context. Well, let's turn to sort of a solicitor's kind of practice, or perhaps, you know, we're in the estate planning stage and Peace. the client has a corporation, corporate interests, whether Opco, Holdco, that kind of situation. Could you show us how this framework would be able to assist us with those kinds of situations?
 

[00:19:25] Doug Higgins: Yeah, and again, it's a situation that both of your firms see all the time. Somebody comes in, they say, you know, I may have some complex assets and maybe they want to redo the wills. maybe they're looking to have some sort of trust created. And for solicitors out there who are approaching this kind of work, one of the really important pieces is you have to be able to understand. the nature of this person's assets. What do they own? What's it worth? If we're talking about corporations, what's the share structure? Are there preference shares? And so what you can see at the top here, and again, it's that style of plain language instruction. I'm speaking to this as though I would speak to a human being. What I've said is review this document. I'd like an outline of the structure of companies that's owned by this person visually. Maybe I want to include a bullet point diagram of the structure just so I can get a really quick appreciation. Because I don't want this to be too easy, I've also added in something saying I'd like a list of any trusts that have been settled by this person. Who are the trustees and what assets do they hold? So you can see this isn't you know, you don't need to be a computer programmer to be using this stuff. It really is just how you would explain this to somebody in your office if you were asking a human being to seek out this information. So these files go into the system, that instruction gets applied and we start to see the output of the AI system.
 

[00:21:00] Ian Hull, LSM: Perfect. OK, so that's that's a way that the corporate analysis can be done. So just quickly, we're going to look through some of the questions because they're timely. How do you get around disclosing your clients that they're usually utilizing AI? We've put it right in our retainer agreement. So onboarding a client, it says right in the retainer agreement that we're using these tools. And that language has been simple, straight, plain English saying we do this and they agree. What platforms like ChatGPT and note-taking tools are we using? All right, I'll just talk briefly on that. We use Otter.ai. But again, it's a closed system. All of these are closed systems. These are great questions about personal details and all that. None of this is being fed into the internet like when you do with the chat GPT account. All right. It's being fed into a closed system, protected. And for example, I know for Thompson Reuters, I don't know about Lexus, I'm sure they're the same. It's saved in Canada. It does all the protection levels that you need. It's like you've got, you're searching within the cloud, within the closed system. OK, so think of it that way and that kind of level of protection. So you're not, there's no privacy, there's no... duty of confidentiality, all of that is covered off. If you save your emails in the cloud, you're in the same boat in terms of the level of protection. Documents with personal detail, again, all you're doing is feeding information within a closed system and you can be very file specific as a consequence. Without reading the reports, their summaries, yes, we can get into some of the documents and I just happened, we happen to use co-counsel, so I know it a little better. So we're going to see how some of the summaries work. With respect to the last question here, and then let's talk about the Auto AI just quickly, is that mistakes happen. Of course, mistakes happen. Again, let's come back to lawyer, tool, lawyer. You're more protected in a closed system from hallucinations. You can't say no hallucinations. Everybody loves to overreact to hallucinations because these cases are out there and everybody gets all spicy about it. What difference is that hallucination? They call it a hallucination. I call it an artictly student didn't double check the site, and I'm just as embarrassed in the front of the judge. So the protection you're given with the closed system is better, but it's not perfect. And again, that's our job. The last thing is this, and then we're going to go to Brian for your next question, because we've got a lot to cover today. What are we doing about note-taking? So there are lots of options. Brian, The one that we happen to have chosen, and again, we are not flogging anybody here. We're just telling you what's out there. We happen to have chosen Otter.ai. It's a closed system. We will take now and we will take notes on every situation possible with a client. We have it clearly in the retainer agreement. As Kim says, right from the intake, they know we are working with AI tools. It flashes up right on my Teams call or my Zoom's call that Otter.ai is taking notes, and it tells you, just like Zoom would tell you. in that regard. So those tools do two things. One is they do a very good job, not a perfect job, a very good job of transcribing. And secondly, what they will do is give you summaries, okay, and action items. And so you start to talk like you would talk to a client. Oh boy, you've given me a lot of data. You give me a lot of information. I now will think what our next steps are as follows. I will do this. You will do this. Here's your homework. Here's my homework. All of that. gets picked up by these tools and comes out in a nice little summary and says, here are the action items as well. So those are the kinds of things that you can use to help facilitate that onerous process of note-taking. So Brian over to you for the next question, as we plow through these.
 

[00:24:48] Bryan Gilmartin: Sure, thanks Ian. So Doug, if we can pivot back to the legal end of things, can we take a look at how these AI tools can be used to examine case law, and maybe how it can look at a number of cases at once depending on the circumstances?
 

[00:25:02] Doug Higgins: Yeah, we certainly can. So I'm going to go back to sharing my screen here. And so this time I'm actually going to show you, Brian, what we're looking at now is another tool in the marketplace. This is Co-Counsel from Thomson Reuters. And so what I've done here, is I've taken an example of somebody who's given you a book of authorities. And it's in full PDF form. And you have to go in and really take a look at what's in this. And so what I've done here is I've given that book of authorities. And what I've done is given the AI an instruction, a prompt to say, look, I want to analyze the contents of this. I want to know the outline of each case. Tell me in this example, is it a family law case? Are we looking at something under the SLRA? Are these people both alive or is one of them, is one of the parties a trustee for an estate? And also what happened? What was the outcome of the case? So you can see that these prompts get fairly robust and we can get really detailed with the information that we're looking for. And here I've just put in a full book of authorities and what you get out is a really crisp summary, breaking down case by case with the exact format that I've asked for. on every single one of them. And so if somebody has given you say 16 cases at once, and you really want to know kind of over overall, where's the trend line? Where are they taking this? This is a really, really good way to look at that, you know, very, very top level very quickly. And I just want to get back to that point I was making earlier about being able to go into the document and check where is this information coming from? So for example, here, on number three that I've highlighted. It's saying this is a proceeding between two living people. It's not in a state. What we can do is click on this footnote and it's going to go into the document. It's not just going to say, you know, the information is in there. It's going to go to the specific paragraph where it's pulling that information from. And also, you know, you might be able to see further information about if it's referenced several times. Often it will have multiple, multiple tab points where it can give you the key evidence that you need as your. approaching and analyzing the output here.
 

[00:27:15] Bryan Gilmartin: Thanks, Doug. That's helpful. So maybe for the benefit of everybody, look, in my experience using these tools, you know, it's good, but it's not a mind reader, right? And so in my experience, the result is really only as good as the prompt you're giving. And so, you know, to the extent you don't. get it on the first try or you don't get the desired answer on the first try. Can you ask follow-up questions? Can you hone in on specifically based on the data set, what exactly it is you want?
 

[00:27:47] Doug Higgins: Yeah, Brian, it's an excellent question because I think that's where people need to keep in mind that we're not giving up our strategic or analytical position within running files. So it's going to give him output. It's going to give results based on our questions, but we then can ask these follow-ups and really kind of guide where the AI is going. So here, you know, it's given me the summary of these cases, but I've actually then said, OK, I want to look at all of these cases. I'm getting the sense that this person has misunderstood a dependent support case under the SLA to actually be a family law matter. You know, can you look at those files and confirm whether this is the case? And it's going to go through and do that analysis for us. You know, this bolded section really is saying, yeah, this person has misunderstood this. And we could ask 10 more follow up. questions and increasingly just narrow the scope of our import. We can get really specific that way.
 

[00:28:43] Bryan Gilmartin: That's great. And then when sorting these cases by legal issues, is it possible to have them sort them on criteria such as how important they are to the argument? So in other words, what's most beneficial versus what's most detrimental and kind of allocate it out so you understand the full landscape of what you're dealing with?
 

[00:29:03] Doug Higgins: Brian, the answer is yes. We can say, you know, I want you to sort this based on their strategic importance. But we can even take that a step further. We could put in a piece of evidence. We can say I have a note from the deceased person in this estate dispute. How does this note impact the relevance of each case and resort on that basis? And it'll take that piece of evidence. It'll apply it into the file logically and then start to interact. OK, where do the facts meet the law in this file? And that's where using these tools goes from, OK, these are helpful. They're time savers to, you know, this is transformative stuff. These are really, really useful for any lawyer. It doesn't matter if you're a solicitor or somebody, a barrister going into trial.
 

[00:29:49] Bryan Gilmartin: That's great. Thanks. I'll turn it over to Kim.
 

[00:29:51] Kimberly Whaley: Sure. Doug, I just want to look at some more practical examples. So one of the things that I do and maybe the other panelists also do is once I get retained, I usually have a lawyer at the firm look at all the documents and start to do a chronology. And maybe there are different categories of chronologies, for example, timelines or medical records or solicitor's notes or pleadings or some such thing. And it tends to be quite a time consuming aspect of, you know, opening a file and keeping that file up to date with the current chronology. Is that something that one of these AI applications can help with? And if so, could you demonstrate that for us?
 

[00:30:41] Doug Higgins: Yeah. So the answer, Kim, is that this is one of those things where these tools really excel. because when we're looking at just pulling out facts from a file and then turning this into a chronology, it's really, really good at these. So what I've done here is I've just taken a bunch of emails and trust documents and letters, and I've said, OK, I would like a timeline that really is just talking about look at the whole file, but also highlight for me within that broader chronology that it's going to create. I want you to highlight the events about a particular asset. or a particular person in this case I've directed it to look at this house on on maple crescent and you get this very full uh chronology and again we can go in we can check exactly where this information is coming from it's going to highlight the specific line or paragraph that it's taking from so you know not only can we do this top level examination of what's happened in this file We can also ask these systems to focus down their chronologies onto a particular person. If we're going into examinations, for example, and we want to look at the actions of one specific person, we can ask for a chronology just about them or just about a particular issue. And so that flexibility is really, really important how these get applied.
 

[00:32:03] Kimberly Whaley: It seems to me that that would be a real time saver. both at the beginning of the file and throughout the duration of the file and even up into including trial preparation.
 

[00:32:17] Doug Higgins: I agree. And I think, you know, one of the things, it's not just time saved, right? Because we as lawyers then get to reallocate that time and we can say, okay, well, now that I have, you know, five more hours, I can spend this working on the really granular detail of how I approach my materials, my pleadings, you know. it allows us more room to breathe on the strategy end of things. So, you know what, these are really, really important.
 

[00:32:44] Kimberly Whaley: I think, too, it's a good service for clients because every time internally that you're updating these chronologies, it's an opportunity to report to your client and to send the chronologies along to say, hey, is there anything we're missing? It might sort of trigger, you know, a document or an aspect that's been missed. when looking through the chronologies. Anyway, thank you, Doug. That's helpful. Over to you, Suzana.
 

[00:33:14] Ian Hull, LSM: I'm just going to jump in. So we've got two more areas we want to cover and a ton of questions. So Suzana, I think you wanted to cover the next portion, just strategies for mitigating risk and compliance generally. And a lot of those questions are being built into these questions that are being given to us. So we'll work through that. Then we'll work through a series of... just some practical tips from Kim, and then we'll leave hopefully a few minutes there to just deal with the slew of questions. So over to you, Suzana.
 

[00:33:47] Suzana Popovic-Montag: So many of the questions that we're seeing are talking about the risk and their concerns over confidentiality and those kinds of things, which are very legitimate because these tools are definitely very powerful. They can be transformative to our practices, but there is... always going to be that concern about risk and about compliance. And so as part and parcel of that, we really want to delve into what are these kinds of things that can help us have more comfort in using the tools. And Ian mentioned at the outset, you know, the fact that we're looking at lawyer-created programs that are closed. And when we talk about closed-loop environments, it means that we're drawing from our own internal databases or from the product's database, like I think Council AI has got its Westlaw, WestEdge, whatever it is, that it's drawing the cases actually from. And so we're not just going out to the Internet and pulling out information nilly-willy. It's coming from internally. And that, I think, is the most important thing and certainly something that, from our firm's perspective, gave us the most comfort in being able to rely on it because there always has been this concern about these hallucinations. And we want to be careful that we are checking our work. I mean, the buck stops with us, as Ian says. We can start with this as a first draft. We can start with it as, you know, just like in the old days, we would rely on students or younger lawyers to create that first product. But we're the ones who have to add that critical thinking. We have to check it and make sure that it's accurate. We just can't get around that.
 

[00:35:17] Ian Hull, LSM: And there's no surprise that there's only two tools right now that are closed system of consequences. Another one, Harvey, which is closed, but we're not doing that because that's really only for large users. But it's a good system, too. Don't get me wrong. But we're drawing on LexisNexis, which has a library the size of 10 rooms. And we're drawing on Thomson Reuters, which is a library of 10 rooms. So you're drawing on all of their content. It's not Internet based content. This is content that is vetted and publishable at each of those producers levels. All right. So, Doug, just on the on the on the point of um and then we'll actually you know what let's let's go to Kim and talk a little bit about um uh just some firm wide adoption issues and then i and then we'll hammer away at some of these questions
 

[00:36:11] Kimberly Whaley: Right so obviously it's a big undertaking to take on an ai project um but but and it comes with expense and so you want to make sure that you're going to be successful in the rollout. I just wanted to come to the table to say a few things about how do we deal with the organization of our system. So we have this product, it has to be organized within your operating system, you have to have all your file material in one place. Nuances would, for example, include things like maintaining consistent naming conventions in your practice and having clear expectations about who's responsible for keeping the files in the system so that doesn't get lost and fall into disarray. And it may include lawyers and legal staff or a mix of that. Did anybody have anything to add on systems?
 

[00:37:16] Ian Hull, LSM: Oh, I think, you know, internal policies work as well. And as I say, clear at the outset. onboard the client knowing that you're going to be using the tool is gives you a lot of guidance. And look, the truth is, I'm sure you found the same Kim at your firm. Clients don't dislike it. It is it is it's typically embraced. And even the recording piece, they're used to it. They've been recorded on Zoom since COVID. Like none of this is like wildly out of the blue for most of my clients anyway.
 

[00:37:47] Kimberly Whaley: Yeah, I think that's right. Obviously there needs to be some leadership, somebody needs to take carriage of the project and clear about when the AI has to be used internally, when it is discretionary, and when it's prohibited. Investing in the training, and so it's really good to hear from Doug that this training is starting to take place. And then of course, with any training, you need refreshers and obviously there's going to be new systems and new applications coming out all the time and you want to make sure that you're apprised of the latest tools. With the client component, I too, Ian, haven't seen a lot of resistance or pushback from clients. They'll ask about the note taker aspect at the beginning. We do have it in our retainer agreement. clearly stated. And, you know, I, there hasn't been any resistance at all. Have you found any, Brian?
 

[00:38:51] Bryan Gilmartin: No.
 

[00:38:52] Kimberly Whaley: Suzana, have you found any resistance?
 

[00:38:55] Suzana Popovic-Montag: Shockingly, not at all. And I was one of the ones who's most concerned about that when we were drafting up our policies and that. And it is surprising. In fact, I'm actually seeing the opposite. I'm seeing clients come to me, having done their own some form of AI in preparing for our meetings. And so. it does seem that people are embracing it and that it is the wave of the future.
 

[00:39:18] Bryan Gilmartin: So let's talk about, we're just going to start applying some of these questions and we'll work through the panel with some of them too. The Otter AI, I just talked about that, the use of it. Can you just give us a sort of an illustration of that? I spoke of the way that we're using it. And I, like Kim, I used to always have someone there to take notes at an intake call and all that stuff. And now I do it on my own. And because you don't take every new file that comes in the door and this way it brings an efficiency just on that level alone that pays for it. And we will talk a little bit about the cost in a second. But, Doug, do you have anything that you want to cover in terms of the Otter AI and what it can do?
 

[00:39:56] Doug Higgins: Yeah, I think it's worth speaking about just for one minute here. So I think, you know, the best way rather than me just. you know, telling you about it. I think it's quite a bit easier to show you here. So what you're actually seeing on the screen is a real time transcription of this discussion, this panel being transcribed by Otter. And I guess it's a bit hung up here. So what I'll show you is a transcript that we had of another presentation last week. And this is from the Estate planner that I've got a transcript of. And you can see here. You get the full walkthrough, what everybody said. And again, it's not perfect, but frankly, it's a lot better than what people can take by hand. And the interesting part of this is we get a nice overview at the end. And you have to think of this in the context of a client call where, say, we've been speaking for an hour. I've told the client I'm going to take certain actions. Maybe the client has said that they'll make a decision or they'll provide me with documents. and we get this nice crisp list of here are all of the action items that need to be taken after this call. Now, one of the things that Counsel AI that we put together for Hull and Hull is this nice tool at the end here where it summarizes the whole call and breaks it down into a quick email where we can, you know, a law firm can flip this to the client and say, thanks for meeting with me. Here's what we talked about. Here are the important things that I said I would do for you that you said you would get to me, as well as just kind of the next steps in this email. And that's one of those things, Ian, when we talk about technology, I think people get lost in the weeds too often about, you know, the actual technology itself. We're talking about saving time so that we can we can improve the relationships that law firms have with their clients. And that that part about being able to more regularly touch base and provide updates to clients. It's so important.
 

[00:41:56] Ian Hull, LSM: So, we're getting some good questions from people asking about small firms, solo practitioners, and solicitors, where AI tools can be used. We have a mixed practice here. I know, Kim, you're exclusively litigation. We certainly use the AI tool in the solicitor's level all the time. Doug's illustrated it through the corporate organization tools that you can use it for to organize that, but also we use it for comparison of prior wills. a quick summary of the executors and what the gifting plan was. And then coming back to Kim's point is, is that you can create reporting letters very efficiently as a consequence of the data that gets pulled. So the costing of it is, is hard to answer. And again, something, some of these questions, you should go direct to Doug later offline, because the costing is, is, is tied to the number of users, what kind of systems you're buying, what, and so it's all over the map, but it is. Typically, literally hundreds of dollars at least a month per user. So it's a significant cost, one which if you don't use it, then you're not going to recover. But if you use it, you'll find, in my experience anyway, an instant recovery. And as I say, some of the data shows like literally tens of thousands of dollars a year in recovery in that respect. The The question, Doug, I just wanted to check with you now is you were talking about prompting. Now, when we first started prompting, and remember, and this is how I use AI. I have a ChatGPT. I actually use Grok. I think whatever. That's my choice. But ChatGPT or Grok are one of the tools out there. And I use it on my day-to-day to practice my prompting and my thinking. It isn't nearly as important the prompting now. I know Co-Counsel actually gives you... Assistance in the prompting. It has a prompting library to help you get through the questioning. So it's not just plain English asking the questions. There are tools built within it to assist with the prompting. But you can learn and get better at the prompting by using it. Hey, I want to go to a restaurant tonight and I really would like to go near the corner of Yonge and St. Clair and I want to make sure it's Italian food. That kind of prompting practice is always a good idea. So it's worth either using the free one or paying a little bit of dough and getting it. Someone added in a really helpful thing, and that was that ChatGPT, I'm told on the questions, has brought out a business ChatGPT that doesn't go up into the internet, the LLM. So that's another tool that might exist for you. Be very careful about using these internet-based, call it that, searching, because that's where the hallucinations are coming from. All right. You're going to it's not impossible to get them in the closed system, but you're going to get a higher level of hallucinations when you're when you're searching through the. the common sourcing of it. Doug, what do you do about... documents? What documents can come into the AI tools, the closed tools, and be used and read? And are there limits? Are there things like, you know, if it's in Word or if it's in handwriting, what kind of limits exist in terms of the analysis of the documents?
 

[00:45:11] Doug Higgins: Sure. I mean, I'd seen one question, and it's a really good one, is can these systems do handwriting? Can they do OCR as well as we'd expect from Adobe or Kofax, whatever people are using. The answer to that is that it's built-in. It's doing that from the gate and it's using that information from the OCR process then to kind of inform the answers that it's given. In terms of file types, it does depend on the platform. I know, for example, co-counsel by Thomson Reuters will do almost any file type. But I know right now they don't do Excel spreadsheets. The same is true for LexisNexis Plus. And in terms of the scope of what kind of documents we can put in. Both companies kind of take a bit of a different approach in terms of how documents are fed into the system. For users that are doing a ton of bulk documentation, uploading, like if you have thousands of files on a litigation file, you may prefer the approach that's taken by Thomson Reuters because they don't have a file cap. There's no data transfer limit. And that's an advantage I think that that platform has. But on the flip side, LexisNexis. has a very well curated system for organizing files within the platform. And it makes recurring searches quite a bit more simple for users. So, you know, it really just comes down to whatever the user's needs are.
 

[00:46:35] Ian Hull, LSM: Okay, so Doug, just step back. We're all lawyers, we're all, you know, slow at moving and transitions and our profession is actually built. to be conservatively slow on anything for good reason in some respects. But this is moving quickly. What are some of the futuristic things that are coming down the pipe? And I'm not talking down the pipe in five years, but where do you see these tools growing to help both the solicitor's practice and the litigation practice?
 

[00:47:06] Doug Higgins: So, Ian, I think there's kind of two answers to this. The first is, is I would anticipate that within the next six months to a year, uh, Every major platform out there that's purpose-built, that's designed for lawyers, is going to have a really robust research feature. The reality is I've seen the development coming down the pike, and I anticipate it's going to give most lawyers a run for their money within the next six months to a year. On the other side, from practice management, from that perspective, right now we're kind of in this phase where people are uploading documents into a system and asking, discrete questions based on those documents. But I anticipate that as things move more in the direction of AI systems being more like a person, being like an agentic system, I think these AI systems are going to be more involved in the active management of you turning to one of your files and saying, what's the status of this? Have we replied to a client on a particular issue? And what are the next steps that need to be taken? And I'm not sure that... most lawyers out there appreciate that this is coming.
 

[00:48:19] Ian Hull, LSM: That's helpful. So again, why do we care about getting involved with AI now? Isn't it going to be a really great tool in a year, as you say, and we should all just turn on our screens at that point?
 

[00:48:31] Doug Higgins: I think there's two answers to that. Number one, it's great now, right? If you're not using AI today, I think you're surrendering a significant strategic advantage to other firms in your area. And that's today, that's three months ago. The other thing, Ian, is the reality is training, not just yourself, but the people that you're working with in your firm. This takes time. And, you know, if you're boarding a moving train, it's a little bit easier to get on when it's moving slowly. And I think that's where the development today is not ultra rapid, but it's picking up pace. And I think within the next year, 18 months, it's going to be extremely difficult for firms to try and simultaneously train all of their users, but also maintain the level of proficiency, both from a technical perspective, as well as, you know, the mastery of the law that clients expect.
 

[00:49:22] Suzana Popovic-Montag: And we've been talking about, you know, these systems and lawyers using the AI tools. What about staff members? Are people doing it sort of firm wide? Are they just doing it with lawyers? Like, how are you seeing that sort of in practice, Doug?
 

[00:49:36] Doug Higgins: Suzana, it's a great question. My personal view is that firms should be taking a whole firm approach on this. Most of the licensing systems that are available through these lawyer-built platforms, typically the approach is if you're buying one lawyer seat, you get an additional support user. So whether that's a legal assistant, a paralegal, I think that the best way to achieve real integration with organic growth and innovation within a firm, I think you have to bring everybody on board because the reality is that law is a collaborative endeavor. And if you're leaving out elements of your team, you know, you're just creating kind of discordance within your systems. I think you've got to have everybody on the same page.
 

[00:50:21] Ian Hull, LSM: I think one of the things that is helpful is grabbing and using champions within the different parts of the firm. If your assistant's a champion and they've got two people around them, a clerk or someone else, and they can be the ones to champion it and vice versa with the lawyers as well and partners and so on in larger firms. Doug, what I noticed with a lot of these... tools, the practice management tools that we use now, for example, our firm uses Slack as another tool in terms of communications. A lot of these tools, monday.com, they're adding into an AI components. What are your thoughts about that in terms of, again, these are all closed systems. Slack is a closed system. It's a closed client management communication system. What are your thoughts about the add-on AI parts of the existing systems?
 

[00:51:16] Doug Higgins: Yeah, so I think they can be a real value add for basically any firm out there. That comment you made a bit at the beginning about closed systems, it's so important. And lawyers can't assume that these are closed systems and that there's no training being being being done on the data, because a lot of these technology firms, you know, they have excellent products, but they're not always open about that. And so that's something when you're talking to vendors, you have to be very explicit. Not only is no file material leaving this system, it's not going out onto the internet, but also ensuring that that company is not training on the data. Because when we talk about data training, that company essentially is retaining a copy of your client information. And you have to think as a lawyer, would you be comfortable with one of your vendors coming in and copying a paper file and blocking over them? I suspect for our audience, the answer is no. And people shudder at thinking about that.

[00:52:12] Ian Hull, LSM: One of the questions we're asked is about the costs. And again, you know, can AI itself be dispersed? And so I'll just tell you, our experience is that what we've done is we've added, and it doesn't cover by any means the AI costs that much, but we've added a $500 disbursement for opening a file. And we call it administrative and technology disbursement that helps to at least defray some of the or take some of the bite out of the costs. It's not carrying the cost by any means. I don't want to underestimate the costs. And a lot of these questions are great. As I say, probably best to go through Doug on it because they're so specific and they're product related that we just don't have the expertise on. And truthfully, we want to make sure that people leave today more invigorated in terms of what the tools can do for us and the importance of them. So what tools you use and how you use them and the cost of those can all be considered by... others at another time. Brian and Kim, do you have anything you want to add to the questions? I'm just going to keep scrolling through them if you...
 

[00:53:23] Kimberly Whaley: Well, I wanted to ask Doug, when he was talking about the medical notes and records, I mean, now the practice of physicians and doctors, the system has changed and everything is typed that goes in there, or word process, but a lot of the older records will still be handwriting. And of course, some of the documents that we receive, holograph wills, et cetera, are handwritten. Is there an issue with those handwritten documents in analyzing the information input?
 

[00:53:57] Doug Higgins: Yeah, Kim, it's a great question. And again, these tools are able to handle handwriting. They can even handle doctor handwriting. And one of the things that we do see, because you're right, things are digitized, but we are still seeing incidents where, you know, there may be a typed out report, but then the doctor has quickly at the bottom of the page written in pen or marker. And they're saying, you know, patient is not oriented to time and place confusion. And if we were just relying on the text and we were missing something like that, I mean, it's a it's a huge factualness. So it is critical that these tools have those abilities. and I will say across the board, the ones that are purpose-built for lawyers across the board, across the board can do that.
 

[00:54:42] Suzana Popovic-Montag: So Doug, how about drafting skills, right? Preparing that notice of application, that notice of motion, the affidavit, how are these tools or where are they at in terms of their evolution at this point in time?
 

[00:54:56] Doug Higgins: It's a really good question, Suzana. So I would say for litigation, you have to think from the perspective of how the systems are producing this material. And in litigation, there's more variables than there might be in solicitor's work. And so I would say for litigation documents, when we're talking about affidavits, when we're talking about anything that's kind of more complex, I don't think that the AI systems, any of them really are at the level where they can go and replace a lawyer. Having said that, you know, we don't just sit down at a desk and start freely typing, right? There's so much planning and outlining that goes into the creation of these documents. And that is where these tools shine. And they will, you know, when they're used by somebody who's trained on them, we're talking about, you know, a dozen hours saved on a lawyer. And again, that time's not going away, but it's just how do we reallocate it strategically to advance the interests of the client in a way that's productive for them and ethical.
 

[00:55:56] Ian Hull, LSM: Yeah. And, you know, when you say time doesn't go away, you know, there's also it's not just getting more files. It's also allows you to go see the hockey game with your kid or something. So there's, you know, putting the pressure of time on lawyers is so intense that this tool, you know, that's another sort of way of looking at it. Doug, the one of the questions that when you talked about it briefly where we're going, but the practice management and project management, that's really where ICAI really... infiltrating our practices. Is this really good? Is this something that's going to happen? And what was it? What's it going to look like? You described it as, you know, you might start to say, okay, what have I done? And what's my next steps? But I'm talking about start to finish what kind of project management, which we all have to do. I mean, the project is the client's problem, and we project manage it from start to finish. What do we where do you see what the tool does now and where it's going?

[00:56:51] Doug Higgins: So uh What you can do today in terms of project management, we're really talking about shepherding all the documents, getting all of our resources together in a way, and having access at a really comprehensive level to all of them. Where the development's going, I think, in the next six months to 18 months, because again, I think people are used to talking about technology in five-year windows. It's going way faster than that. We don't have the time to think about five years down the road. I anticipate that the AI will be much more actively involved in what happens on a file. We're talking about where documents are actually stored, the creation of new documents, your ability to turn to an AI system or a junior lawyer's ability to turn to it and say, what are the next strategic steps? And again, it's not doing it for us, but providing that guidance can be really, really helpful.
 

[00:57:50] Suzana Popovic-Montag: Thanks very much, Doug. Those are great comments and great answers to some wonderful questions that are being posed. And this is a new area for so many people. And it is good that we can have these dialogues so that we can try to alleviate the friction points, the concerns, and collectively brainstorm how to incorporate these things into our practices. So with that, I'll turn it over to Kim for any final comments.
 

[00:58:15] Kimberly Whaley: I don't think we have any more questions today that at least it. I think we can answer easily enough in the time we have. So I just want to thank you, Doug, for your help and guidance in getting us up to speed with the tools, with some practical looks at how they work. And thanks to the panelists today. And hopefully we've provided you with some ease in your approach to AI tools.
 

[00:58:49] Mallory Hendry: And I'll just jump in and echo Kim there to thank our speakers for sharing their expertise with us today and to everyone in the audience for being here with us. Keep an eye out for more upcoming webinars and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.
 

[00:59:03] Kimberly Whaley: Thanks everyone.