On today’s Legally Speaking Podcast, I’m delighted to be joined by Monica Zent. Monica is the Principal at the Law Innovation Agency and Founcder & CEO of ZentLaw. She is a pioneering legal industry innovator, Legal Tech expert and Digital Innovation Strategist, with nearly 3 decades as an investor, successful entrepreneur and legal industry thought leader. Monica is passionate about driving transformation in legal operations and technology adoption.

So why should you be listening in? 

You can hear Rob and Monica discussing:

– Monica’s Pioneering Role in Legal Tech and Innovation

– Dual Leadership in ZentLaw and the Law Innovation Agency

– Focus on Predictive Analytics and AI in Legal Tech

– Advisory and Thought Leadership Work with an Innovation Mindset

– Helping Organisations Innovate Safely

Connect with Monica Zent here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicazent/

Transcript

Innovation has been part of what I’ve been doing and working in for a really long time. And then as an early legal tech founder, I was one of the earliest female legal tech founders in our market. It’s always been important to me as a business leader to ensure that not only our team members, but also our clients are fulfilled and they’re getting what they need. But we are a very client centric organization, and I would say that that drives a lot of what we do. I’m really interested. And also looking at different legal tech and litigation that involves the predictive analytics capabilities that we can do so much more with now than what we could do before. Pre ChatGPT and all of open source as well as AI models that we have now. On today’s Legally Speaking podcast, I’m delighted to be joined by Monica. Monica is the principal at the Law Innovation Agency and the founder and CEO of ZentLaw. She is the pioneering legal industry innovator, legal tech expert and digital innovation strategist with nearly three decades as an investor, successful entrepreneur, and legal industry thought leader, Monica is passionate about driving transformation in legal operations and technology adoption. So a very big, warm welcome to the show. Monica. Hey, Rob, it’s so nice to be here. Thank you. Oh, it’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. And before we dive into all the amazing things you’re doing in and around the world of legal, we do have a customary icebreaker question here on the podcast, which is on the scale of one to ten, with ten being very real. What would you rate the hit TV series suits in terms of its reality of the law, if you’ve seen it? Oh gosh. Well, I hate to admit, but I actually have not seen it. I should, although I I’m going to say in terms of most, you know, law focused fictional TV series, I mean, they’re usually about halfway, right? I’m going to probably rate them about a five or six because in terms of the, you know, the accuracy, I mean, sometimes it’s it’s sort of halfway there, but not one hundred percent a very justified answer. And with that, we can move swiftly on to talk all about you. So to begin with, would you mind telling our listeners a bit about your background and career journey? Sure. Uh, well, yeah, it has been quite a journey, actually. Uh, I’ve been an entrepreneur probably longer than a lawyer, and certainly that was my first part of my journey. So starting companies early on, starting in grad school, started some of my earliest companies back then, uh, as a new lawyer, uh, exited those companies, uh, practiced law for a short time, also continued to practice law, looking at sort of the the conventional law firm model and kind of worked in that model, worked in the in-house environment, uh, launched law twenty three years ago as an alternative legal services provider at a time when that was very, uh, actually a non-existent sector, a very nascent sector. Uh, it was an early legal tech founder. Uh, even if I go back to one of my very early companies, there was a licensing component. It was a music company, but there was still licensing licensing component. So that, I guess you could say, was in some ways very early legal tech. And that was more than twenty five years ago. But then also founded other legal tech companies, have been an active angel investor in legal tech advisor, sometimes in the venture community and their legal tech investments, and then advising through kind of law innovation agency on AI law and policy, and have been a writer and speaker on various topics related to legal, tech and legal innovation for a long time. Yeah, and that’s a that’s a lot. We’re going to try and unpack in one episode for sure, because it’s super impressive what you’ve done. So let’s go to the law innovation agency. What does your role there involved and what’s sort of the work you’re involved in. Tell us a bit more. Yeah, Innovation agency is really a consultancy focused on working with corporate law departments, law firms, government agencies on how they can leverage technology, legal tech in particular, innovate their practices, their processes. So there’s some legal component component to that that’s brought in. There is also sort of the legal innovation component leveraging legal tech and AI. Of course. How can they be leveraging that in a way that’s effective and efficient. Help them drive and scale more effectively. And also building policies. So there’s some policy component to that work as well. And so a lot of agency kind of spawned out of work that we had been doing and seen in Zanla for a number of years. It’s a separate organization and I’m involved with it. But these are things that we touched on for years at Zanla from a legal standpoint, legal ops consulting, helping clients develop internal policies around certain types of legal technology and tech adoption and whatnot. And now that’s kind of exploded with AI in terms of sort of clients and organizations trying to navigate the landscape. Yeah. Daily, if not hourly, in the world we live in, in my newsletter on venture legal. And, I mean, I feel like it’s just the regulatory landscape alone is the gift that keeps giving right now in terms of content. There’s so much to cover, so much to unpack. Yeah, literally lots of moving parts. But you’re very much at the forefront and pioneering and leading when it comes to all of this, and we’re going to talk about that in a moment. But I just want to stick with the law innovation agency, because how do you help? You touched on it sort of. The government agencies and these global enterprises embrace innovation without causing detriment to their systems. Yeah. Great question. Um, well, innovation is a topic that I’ve been writing about and speaking about in law for a long time. I mean, I wrote a piece back in twenty seventeen about innovation and the innovation mindset and why every lawyer needs one and why every legal team needs one. And it was widely shared. People liked that piece. It’s still shared to this day, and it was something that I think touched a nerve. And still I mean, that was a long time ago, but now we’re still talking about innovation and it’s important. I mean, the law takes a while to catch up. And so helping organizations navigate what this new environment looks like, this new paradigm and this new economy, which is something that I’ve not been, um, I’ve not been immune to in launching a business like law. Years ago, when it was a new paradigm for a new economy at the time, and that was a long time ago. So, you know, we continue to see these evolutions in the legal industry where organizations have to continue to look at how they can be more relevant, stay relevant and scale effectively. And there are a lot of things that have changed in terms of the practice of law. I mean, even in the in-house environment, this mindset around innovation being open to that, being open to leveraging legal technology, but also being open to the idea of looking at the legal function in an organization a little bit differently, running it sort of in a way, the way a CEO runs a company and kind of looking at it from that perspective, how can we drive value in the organization? What does that really mean, and how do we accomplish that? Um, law firms, of course, they are businesses. So that’s they already have that lens. But for them it’s really how can we stay relevant? What can we and should we be doing. Because our business model as a large law firm isn’t necessarily going to be sustainable, perhaps in the same manner in which it has been. So depending on the vantage point, kind of looking at that now in the government agency front, that’s also a unique vantage point in terms of talking with them and counseling them through how they could look at being innovative. Government agencies tend to be viewed as and they are often slower moving, um, more bureaucratic. It’s harder to integrate, um, new processes. It’s harder to sort of build through change management and bring that to, to light. And so helping them navigate. And a lot of these principles that we’ve used for years in legal ops to people process technology, focusing on the people, the culture, what’s going on on that front, looking at process and then layering in technology. But there’s so much right now in terms of AI, too, and there’s a lot of confusion I’ve noticed across these different environments in terms of people are excited about AI, they want to use it, but it’s how do we do it? What do we do? How can we be responsible? What makes sense for our organization or our function? And so there’s a lot of educating and training sometimes as well. So, Monica, you’re also the founder and CEO of ZentLaw. So by merging the efficiencies and flexibility of outsourcing with the best attributes of a law firm, ZentLaw offers a better way to practice for attorneys and winning proposition for clients. So please can you tell us more about ZentLaw? Well, ZentLaw has been an Alsp alternative legal services provider for a long time, so, you know, it does blend these attributes of sort of the outsourcing model. I mean, we have our flexible talent offerings, we have our subscription services. So we have these outsourcing friendly models that have been very popular and make a lot of sense for organizations that are looking to scale effectively and save in the process, as well as sort of this ability to rely on on trustworthy resources, high quality resources as a high degree of quality in terms of the various talent, but also providing clients variety in terms of talent. So it’s not just attorneys, but it’s also and this can sometimes be a misconception around Lsps. P.S uh, there are misconceptions or myths around the quality of the talent. Where the talent come from, who are they? So we have a wide range of talent from attorneys to contracts, managers, contracts, administrators, legal professionals of various types, whether they’re compliance professionals, IP professionals, legal ops professionals as well, uh, paralegals. So we have a range of legal talent and the way we approach it and approach the market and always have is sort of focusing on really high quality people, because that builds and helps us to ensure that there is a high quality that’s being delivered, but also, uh, building relationships with clients for the long term. And then there is an efficient, you know, efficiency as part of our DNA. So there’s an efficiency component we talk a lot about in our marketing and on our website. And it’s true, there has been a lot of work in the efficiency realm, as we know, with just the advent of legal apps and whatnot. But back when law started, we were doing this way back then before legal ops was a thing. So efficiency has been part of our DNA since the beginning in terms of legal operations, looking at how to drive value within legal departments, how to help them scale work more efficiently, how to develop client service teams that make sense, that maximize their budget. Even our solutions are designed to be budget friendly, and they’re designed to be flexible and right size based on a client’s needs. So there are a lot of attributes to the business model that are really designed to drive value and efficiency and long term growth for clients. The legal tech component is something I’m sure we’ll touch on too, but there’s also that part of it as well. Yeah, and you’re exceptionally client centered from from what I’m saying there. And, you know, very strategic minded. And that’s obviously why everything you touch is successful. And congratulations. With that I want to talk about the three foundations now of law. Women owned innovative and diverse. So what is the importance of these particular three foundations to you? I would say the women owned and diverse are probably one foundation, and we’ve always valued diversity within law in terms of our hiring practices. And it’s always been an important component for us. We we’ve been diversity proponents in the market for a long time. And and our clients appreciate that as well. So we’ve been at the forefront of that since the beginning. And women owned, I think I try to serve as a mentor for a lot of female business owners and female founders. So I hope that that’s inspiring. I mean, I do try to mentor where I can and have done that a lot over the years. Um, innovative is definitely something that we’ve always driven in our industry from the very beginning. I mean, being an alsp way back in two thousand and two, when that was hardly understood, there were only a handful of us out there starting Lsps. And really, it took a lot of time and effort to educate the market, to carve a new path, to drive business and to get clients to understand this new business model and to be willing to try it. And so innovation has been part of what I’ve been doing and working in for a really long time. And then as an early legal tech founder, uh, I was one of the earliest female legal tech founders in our market. And so building companies, building legal tech even early on, learning from those those examples. And not every legal tech company I founded has been successful. Right? There are scenarios in which sometimes we’re too early to the market. There were other things that were going on. And but I think that’s the thing that’s part of the founder journey is you learn from every um, of course, success is always the goal. I mean, you’re in business for a reason, but at the same time, you learn from every, every roadblock or every obstacle in the journey. And then I would say the third pillar really for us is efficiency. Uh, it’s always been core to our DNA, and it drives a lot of what we offer, not only in terms of our solutions and the way we approach that, but the way that we interact and engage with clients, our work around the legal ops realm, and even our work around legal tech. It’s all designed to drive efficiencies and help people and organizations, um, get more done with less resources and use the resources that they do have more effectively. You shared as a lifetime entrepreneur and innovator, I formed ZentLaw to revolutionize the way companies obtain effective professional resources while providing better opportunities for attorneys and modern solutions for the legal industry at large. So how does ZentLaw differentiate itself from other service providers? A couple of things. I mean, one is our brand equity and our long standing relationships in the marketplace and with clients. We’ve been doing this for a really long time. We’ve built up a lot of trust and, uh, and a brand that people understand and recognize. So there’s that. Uh, the other piece of it is because we’ve been doing it a long time. We really understand the market very, very well. Um, in terms of what works, what doesn’t work, what are some of the market realities? What are some of the levers that impact these solutions, and how can they be effective in bringing those to the market? So there’s a lot of depth there that, uh, just institutional knowledge and depth that has been built up over these many years that, um, I would say that I bring and that the company brings to the marketplace, and that’s a competitive advantage. Uh, the other competitive advantage is knowing the space really well and really understanding. We are very client centered. And so it’s and we really understand clients needs and pain points. Um, our organization well, it’s always been very people centered. I mean, to me, I’ve often said the law is a people business. So it’s always been important to me as a business leader to ensure that not only our team members, but also our clients are fulfilled and they’re getting what they need and all of that. And it’s always been very important. And but we are very client centric organization. And I would say that that drives a lot of what we do. And I can’t speak for other organizations, but I can say being very client or customer obsessed can sometimes be a competitive advantage as well, in some sense, because you’re really focused on what you can do to deliver the best possible experience for that client. And that’s the key, isn’t it? I think it’s it’s not just necessarily about delivering the service. It’s the best. It’s delighting them. It’s going above and beyond because other people might be able to do what you do. But if you can do it to an extra level and delight your clients and make them feel exceptionally valued, then that trust, like you say, that reputation you build up, it just continues to compound. Time after time after time and good things happen. Okay, you’ve been at the forefront of legal tech for nearly three decades. You’ve done some fabulous things. At what moment did you realize law and technology needed to merge? Yeah, that’s a great question. Um, it’s funny because my one of my early companies, as I mentioned, my second legal or my second startup, um, early on was over twenty five years ago, was a music company tied in with the licensing realm, and it was a big data play and all that. But interestingly, I didn’t consciously think about it at the time as legal tech at all. Um, I thought about it as solving a problem that I had encountered working as a music licensing coordinator while I was finishing law school, and discovered a way to solve this problem and built a database for it and amassed all the data and and did all of this. But I didn’t really think about it in terms of it being a legal tech product until kind of, uh, many years later. So that’s kind of funny in terms of just not realizing I had stepped into legal tech when I actually did. Um, but yeah, law and technology, I mean, I was I’ve been fascinated by technology all my life, literally, and an early technologist. So I think it hit me. I mean, even during law school, the idea of leveraging technology, being able to use technology in the practice of law, um, that was at a time when, I mean, there were legal research databases, but then, uh, kind of dating myself, of course. But I mean, with the internet and all that, then we were able to kind of get more done. And I was an early web founder as well, and early user of a lot of different aspects of what was available to us through the web and through the internet. So for me, I mean legal tech and the idea of technology being integrated into the workplace is not a new concept. In fact, even when I launched launched ZDNet law years ago, the very first year we launched, I launched an offering called Virtual Counsel, and I remember trying to explain this to clients, and people were just not getting it. They were not understanding this idea of being able to use a legal resource that was virtual. And I was trying to sort of pitch this concept of, no, really, you can we can you can engage the lawyer, but they’re not going to be in your office every day. And it was just such a hard thing to get people to get their head around. And I mean, it’s so funny now, right? Because, I mean, it’s ubiquitous. But this is, again, twenty three years ago. So trying to kind of get people to understand that there was even back then we had technology, and I was trying to leverage it to deliver services in a way that was more cost effective to clients through this virtual model. And but it was, again, really hard to sell. So, uh, yeah, I mean, for me, technology and law have been intertwined for for a long time. Yeah. And again, I love how you kind of, you know, just naturally came across, like you say, that scenario from the music industry. And that leads nicely to my next question I was talking, we’d like to talk about, which is legal tech across different industries because you’ve worked across, you know, healthcare, media, consumer products. So how does legal tech vary across each sector and how do you tailor legal tech to each specific industry? Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, legal tech, I know it’s interesting because legal tech is often thought of as just this big blanket technology that just sits right on top of legal. And there are some of those technologies, of course, but agreed, there can certainly be some tailor made solutions as well. I do believe there are different ways we can think about legal tech, right? We can certainly think about well, okay, I’m focused more on the enterprise. I mean, there’s the whole realm of legal tech for the consumer. So we’ll put that aside. And then there’s another whole realm of legal tech that’s focused more on the access to justice kind of environment, maybe the The judiciary and those types of environments. We’ll put that aside. But if we’re just focusing on the enterprise, we we have different categories of legal tech, right? We have legal tech that kind of can wrap across a number of different functions. Um, a lot of the AI driven legal tech is focused on that. So it can span a lot of different types of workflows across a lot of different types of areas, from compliance to litigation to contracting or IP. So you can have this legal tech sitting on top of a lot of these different functions and driving efficiencies in those areas. And then we can have bespoke solutions. We can have bespoke legal tech solutions that are driving specific types of functions. So specific solutions and the compliance sector. I’ve written about this on my newsletter on LinkedIn and called Venture Legal. And I’ve done some kind of coverage on legal tech industry itself, uh, what the meaning of legal tech is. And I’ve talked a little bit about even regulatory tech. There’s a whole subset that kind of I find pretty interesting called regulatory tech kind of helping organizations deal with the regulatory compliance aspects of what they’re trying to do in their various industries. And even in that there’s some overlap with certain areas, like fintech is a great example where there can be some heavy overlap with legal tech because it’s such a heavily regulated industry on the media and entertainment side, we have a lot of overlap with branding and brand enforcement and even anti-counterfeit. Right. And some of these other things, there can be some overlapping considerations there in terms of IP protection and brand protection in the media and entertainment space, that legal tech can be uniquely poised to to solve. And there are some companies that I’ve discussed or spoken with and worked with that are in that realm. And then we look at sort of other environments. I mean, litigation is its own area, right? And there are certainly unique legal tech solutions. I mean, we’ve seen e-discovery for a long time. That’s been out there for some time, but I’m really interested. And also looking at different legal tech and litigation that involves the predictive analytics capabilities that we can do so much more with now than what we could do before. Pre ChatGPT and all the sort of open source as well as AI models that we have now. So there’s just a lot more available to us now than there was before. Today’s episode is brought to you by Clio Duo, the first fully integrated legal practice management and accounting solution built for UK law firm with Clio Duo. You can manage your cases, clients, billing and accounting all in one secure, easy to use platform. No more juggling between different systems or worrying about data syncing. Everything works seamlessly together. Clio duo was designed to save solicitors time, reduce admin headaches and to give you a complete view of your firm’s finances and operations in one place. And as always, you’ll have Clio Award winning support available twenty four over five by live chat, phone and email so you’re never on your own. Discover why firms across the UK are excited about Clio Duo. Visit Clio. Com to learn more and see how you can simplify the way you run your practice. Now back to the show. And of course we need to now dive into AI. You know we can’t get away from it. So I want to talk about Law Desk three sixty is described as an AI powered platform revolutionizing legal operations. So what challenges regarding legal teams were you aiming to solve, and how is AI more generally changing the way legal teams function today? Yeah, I mean, law three sixty was one of those legal tech products spawned out of law labs that was designed to help legal departments be more efficient, leveraging collaboration technology that was AI powered. Um, this was another example of a little too early to the market, and we didn’t have the benefit of, again, the LMS and the various AI technologies that we have now. I mean, it was built with early natural language processing and machine learning. It was a very solid product. Uh, but what I envisioned as a founder in creating that product wasn’t quite we weren’t quite able to bring that to fruition. It was really because the technology that we had available to us, I mean, the product was built seven years ago. So this is quite a while ago pre what we have now in terms of the AI landscape. And so again, just another example of you can have a great piece of technology. But if it’s not you don’t have some of the tech to catch up to that it’s not able to solve that problem that maybe you’re trying to solve, but it’s still a problem we’re solving. And in fact, it was a precursor to some of the AI powered collaboration technologies that are out there today. Like Agora is a good example of an AI focused AI native, uh, collaboration technology, and we laid groundwork for that at S360. We were solving the same exact problem, which is sort of how to allow organizations to collaborate more effectively, more efficiently, uh, and leveraging AI to do that. And again, I mean, our product was able to accomplish certain interesting outcomes, but not of the level that we can now with the speed that we can now with the technology that’s available to us today. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And things are changing at a rapid pace, as we alluded to before. And yeah, we’re big fans of La Guerra. We’ve had Jonathan Williams, who heads up things over in France for La Guerra and Chris Williams on the community side. So folks go and check out those previous episodes as well. But on the flip side of that, two very successful exits for you in terms of some ventures. So what were the most surprising lessons you’ve learned from scaling and exiting legal tech businesses? Well, yeah, I would say, I mean, scaling and exiting any business at any level. There are always lessons to be learned. I mean, those exits were earlier in my career. So different set of considerations as I look back. There were pros and cons with those in terms of, uh, as I sort of reflect back as a founder, I think one of the things as a founder is being able to sort of let go, move on and start something new or let go, move on and keep building. And it’s hard sometimes for founders to let go. It’s hard for founders to sometimes be okay with that. But I do believe that’s part of the founder journey, and it is important. And change is always good and helps us and keeps us nimble and allows us to grow. But I yeah, other lessons would be thinking about are you selling too early? In hindsight, one of my earlier ventures I felt I did sell too early, but again, it was a different time, a different stage of my life. And so you kind of look back and you reflect later. Uh, so there are things like that sometimes you can think about of of timing. Um, what’s the right time? What’s the right juncture? Does it make sense? Uh, who is the the acquirer? Does that, does that does that make sense for what you’re trying to accomplish or the legacy of what you built or where you’re trying to go next? So there are a lot of different considerations that founders can consider. And and if you have investors and obviously that’s going to impact, if you don’t, then you have maybe more freedom to decide what’s appropriate or what you’re comfortable with. As a founder. So there’s a lot of different considerations. And, uh, certainly, um, these are sometimes these are topics I unpack as well. In my venture legal newsletter, I wrote a piece, uh, a couple of weeks ago on The Founder Paradox and talked about founder attributes. And so I do like to cover the founder journey a bit there as well. Yeah. No, absolutely. And again, the more lessons and learnings we can share, the better. Um, talking of the future, it’s very hard, I think, to to predict. But AI is absolutely transforming document review, transforming the world of law, going to continue to do so. So what does the I guess future role of a lawyer look like in your opinion? Yeah, it’s a great and fascinating question because it’s one I think we’re all thinking about. Right. Um, but yeah, I would say one of the things is, well, a lawyer of the future, certainly tech enabled, right? Tech savvy, tech enabled, uh, not afraid of AI, knows how to use AI, uses AI in their daily life, uh, for various things. probably as a search engine at the very least. And and is comfortable with how to use AI in the workplace in a way that’s both responsible but also drives efficiency. And I think that is something that’s important. There’s been a lot of fear in the industry at times in terms of people worried about AI taking their jobs away and AI displacing them completely, and perhaps some of that fear is well placed. But again, it’s looking at not necessarily displacing somebody. But but how can you do what you’re doing better, faster, cheaper, more efficiently, and so that you can save your time, your energy and your brainpower for something that’s more high value. And so that’s I believe it’s a mindset shift. It’s really looking at how can we shift our mindset. And I don’t believe it’s too far off. A lot of other tech revolutions we’ve experienced, I mean, many of us have lived through the advent of the internet and the mobile phones and then electronic signatures and the cloud, and then here we are with AI. I mean, every time there were these massive tech shifts, people had to sort of stop and think about, how are we working? Is this okay? Everyone was pressing pause. I don’t know if this is okay. Are we are we safe to move forward? You know, it was all this thought and talk that was going on. And I remember these dialogues happening with the internet, with the cloud. Um, I mean, even around electronic signatures and then around around virtual, uh, just even zoom. I mean, there was talk early on about, is this okay? Is this acceptable? Can people have conversations you know about with clients over zoom? I mean, so there were all these conversations that were happening every time technology has been introduced. But then eventually, once people got comfortable with it, they realized, oh my gosh, this is so efficient. I can do so much more now, or I can actually accomplish things I couldn’t accomplish before. So I believe that AI is going to be like that. I mean, obviously it’s probably the most the most transformational technology shift that we’re going to see in our lifetimes. Perhaps. But it is, uh, I believe in some ways in the workplace environment, it’s a lot like these other tech shifts that we’ve seen over these decades. And and it’ll probably be something that just becomes integrated within our workplaces, uh, like a very natural piece of technology, just like we use lots of other technology. Yeah. And, you know, the mobile device at some point will become redundant, right? Whether we move to the glasses, who knows? Um, you know, I’m keeping a very close eye to neurotechnology. We’ve had some great voices in around there in the world. And what what that means, obviously, it’s acceptable now for you to be tracked for your heart rate on a on an Apple Watch or things like that. But Neurotech could take things to an even higher level with brain data and all these things. So it’s going to be an interesting time, that’s for sure. And I want to ask this question because you’ve held a couple of hats, obviously the founder side, but also investor hat. So how has your perspective with both of those shaped the advice you do give to founders? I know you’ve mentioned in your newsletter you give out some, some, some, some sort of stories and lessons, but just from those two sides of the coin, how has that shaped shape your advice you give to founders? Yeah. Thank you. It’s an interesting question. Well, I’ve been an investor for twelve years in legal tech, almost thirteen years now, actually. And I’ve worked with a lot of founders, advised a lot of founders. I would say I bring a unique perspective as an investor because I’ve been a founder so many times. I mean, I’ve been a founder seven times. I’ve had some exits. I’ve had some that didn’t exit. Um, and so and all profitable in some level or another to some degree. And so I do bring a lot of perspective, I believe, as a founder, really understanding the founder journey, but also being able to provide advice and guidance in terms of problem solving strategy, uh, innovation, uh competition, how to navigate certain challenges, and then also even just how to navigate that founder journey. I mean, there’s a lot that goes into that. And uh, when I invest, I do look at not just the technology or the product. And is it solving a real problem? Is it solving a real problem that needs to be solved right now? A lot of those investor questions are questions that I raise and like to see, but I also like to see the team. I like to see who the founders are. I like to understand what’s their motivation, what’s behind them. And and there are certain maybe attributes I tend to gravitate towards because having been a founder myself, I believe that having these attributes are important. And, um, and founders that have them, they, they can tend to do really well. And the founders that don’t, that’s okay. They can still maybe nurture themselves or grow to that, to that level if that’s something that they want to do. But um, yeah. And I kind of covered some of this in some of my venture legal and other pieces that I’ve written over the years. But yeah, I love, I love sort of the founder journey. And I guess because I’m truly a builder at heart, I really can relate to that mentality. And, uh, I understand it. Yeah, very much so. You understand it and lots of experience around it. A very quick fire question. You were kind of touching on it there, but I want to be a little bit provocative. Are entrepreneurs born or made? Very interesting question. I you know, I feel that there’s a little bit it’s a little bit of both. I think some people that’s the lawyer answer. Right. It depends. Right now I feel like it. Yeah. Some are born and that’s just who they are. And some are made because of their life experiences, or maybe their upbringing or their environment that they were around. Definitely. So I believe it can be. It can be nature. It can be nurture. It can be a combination of both. And, uh, I believe a lot of folks can accomplish hopefully their dreams, you know, if that’s something that they want to do, they can nurture some of those traits as well if they don’t naturally have them. Yeah. Well said. And I think you have so many different perspectives of coming up the legal industry because you’ve been a licensed attorney, you’ve invested in legal tech Regtech security startups for many, many years. So all of this whilst advocating for things that we fully support here on the show as well, which is diversity in the law and technology. So what is the current state of diversity in law and technology in America, and what changes still need to be implemented to ensure people from different backgrounds are part of the law and tech community. That’s a great question. I know, and it’s great to see that you guys are kind of interested in talking about that. It is still an area that I would say in general. I mean, well, looking back over the last twenty years for, for instance, having been involved in the diversity realm in law for that long. Uh, early on, it was there was not as much going on. And we certainly made progress in the last twenty years. I would say there’s still progress to be made. Uh, we’re starting to see a lot more, um, leadership among diverse members of our of our profession. Uh, so we’re starting to see them move up in the leadership ranks. We’re starting to see a lot more diversity, even among the legal tech founder community. Uh, so so we are definitely starting to see a lot more of that. I mean, even with legal tech and the creation of legal tech, there were very few female founders, and now there’s a ton of female legal tech founders. Um, there’s a lot of founders that are people of color. We’re also seeing people that are other folks on the diversity spectrum. We’re looking at neurodiverse. We’re looking at folks that are former veterans and people coming into the space as well, um, as whether whether they’re legal tech founders or also leaders in sort of the in-house environment or leading maybe practice groups or innovation functions within large law firms. So we’re definitely seeing more. I think part of it is because of the, the attention, uh, around the topic. There’s been writing, there’s been speaking, and there’s a contingent of folks that I’ve known for years in the industry that are very vocal on the topics. And we and some of them I’ve spoken with or been on panels with over the years. So there’s a lot of writing and speaking awareness that’s being, um, being raised and brought to light. And I think that helps. And then certainly, uh, just people being more open minded and, and I believe it’s part of also the culture. I would imagine that part of the part of it is the culture just in general, a lot more acceptance in the culture and and also an acceptance of what diversity means. Again, it’s a broad and vast category, and there’s a lot of different types of diversity. We’re talking about neurodiversity. There’s the LGBTQ environments as well, and team and realms. And so there’s just a lot of other folks that are bringing these dialogues to light. Yeah. No. And again, it’s something we fully support. And I think, you know, there are so many great people in and around the world of legal industry really pushing, um, for more inclusion. And it’s something, as I say, that, you know, the more of us hold the conversation, the more change that we can happen for good, because diversity of thought is powerful and it can make you so much richer as an organization for it. Okay. I want to talk about pro bono now, because you’ve been dedicated to serving your community for over two decades, making legal technology more accessible and inclusive through the pro bono work. So could you talk through some of the projects you’ve been part of and the impact they’ve had? Sure. Um, yeah. I mean, pro bono has been something I’ve been involved with for a long time. Uh, I would say I probably spend some time, uh, at least once, once a quarter doing some of that work. We we do that through. We’ve done that every single year. I’ve done it even before founding law. So it’s always been important to me. I feel like it’s a moral duty we have in civil society for people to be able to contribute to whatever degree they can and are able to help those that are in need. And if we are lawyers and we have skills around that area and can contribute to help people, I believe that that’s important too. Uh, so it’s to me, it’s sort of a moral duty, but it’s also a duty around how can we help the community. And early on, I would say a lot of it is really just helping regular, regular folks, really with their legal issues. Uh, so not a lot of tech options there. It’s really just helping people walking through the door, uh, in different environments that we’ve worked with, whether they’re inner city kind of law clinics or there are other types of sort of just regular law clinics, uh, those types of environments. And then, of course, now with legal tech, there’s a lot more opportunities to help more people at scale. So I am interested in, you know, less sort of having to be sometimes on the ground, boots on the ground helping. But but really leveraging legal tech to help people through some of these access to justice types of products. Uh, that can that can deliver a wider, uh, a wider kind of, uh, I don’t know, range of help, if you will, to the market that needs it. And I do believe with AI, there’s a tremendous opportunity to bring sort of more of this access to justice or self-help resources to folks and make them more accessible and more cost effective. So I do believe there’s a great opportunity for a lot of pro bono, uh, in terms of the law and and leveraging legal tech to be able to reach these segments of the market that otherwise wouldn’t be able to get the legal help that they need. Yeah. Really well said. And, you know, absolutely, we talk a lot about tech for good and hopefully reducing that access to justice gap through the utilization of tech for, like you say, those that need it. So, Monica, you’ve been recognized for your expertise and leadership, earning a huge number of awards, including Silicon Valley Woman of Influence, twenty twenty three. Corporate counsels Women, Influence, Power and Law Award for the Innovative Leadership, twenty nineteen, and the International Legal Technology Association’s Entrepreneur of the year twenty nineteen. So as you continue being recognized for your work, what are your future plans for the law, Innovation Agency and ZentLaw? Yeah, well, I mean, it’s always exciting to think about the future. I’m a futurist by nature, so I’m very excited to kind of look around corners and think about what’s next. And I’m still sort of thinking about that myself a little bit. But I will say definitely, uh, really interested. And of course, AI, uh, as a technologist myself and really interested in the capabilities there. So looking at what we can do with AI to deliver legal services in a way that have never really been delivered before. I tried to solve this problem a number of years back with law labs and creating legal technology and incubating legal tech within law, and pairing legal technology and early AI through our again machine learning, natural language processing based applications. Pairing that technology with services and combining and bringing both to the market. Um, and so that was a vision that I had a number of years ago. I mean, when Zent Labs was created nine years ago. Um, the challenge again, as I kind of hinted at before, was the technology just wasn’t there. We just didn’t the vision was there in terms of what I was trying to accomplish and trying to build, but the tech just wasn’t quite there. And then the appetite wasn’t quite there. Um, it just still having to continue to educate the marketplace. I mean, even to this day, sometimes I still have to educate, uh, organizations or in-house legal teams on an LSP. And what is an LSP and what do we offer and why is what is the benefit of that? So we’re still sort of in this area, in this space within the law where there’s still some growth, uh, room for growth. But I do believe that right now we have a unique opportunity with the AI technology that we have to combine services with AI, and I’m looking at sort of doing that as well as sort of on the AI law and policy front and really helping organizations navigate this and build policies and build frameworks around the use of AI. And so that’s sort of more speaking to the law innovation agency side of the House. But on the front, really looking at how can we pair AI and services and bringing that to the marketplace, because that is what I envisioned with Law Labs. So looking at how we can do that effectively. Yeah. And I’m sure it’s going to be highly effective like everything else you’ve touched before. It’s been, you know, really, really successful. And it’s been a really fascinating discussion I’ve really enjoyed today. But before I let you go, what’s your, I guess, some, some final pieces of advice. What would you say to those trying to lead in tech driven legal spaces? What advice would you say to them? Oh, thank you for asking. Well, yeah, I would say piece of advice would be thinking about again, remembering that this market can sometimes move slow, but then it can also tend to move fast. And so kind of thinking about who your audience is, if you’re trying to sell tech into the marketplace, or you’re building tech for a particular segment of our market, thinking about who is that audience, do you need to educate them? What’s their mindset? What’s important to them? Are you solving a real problem that they have today that needs to be solved? So kind of thinking about, again, some of those questions that I’d ask as an investor, but thinking about some of those those questions in terms of your audience, your your target customer and who what are who are they and what do they bring to the table in terms of what’s important to them, and how do you fit into that picture? So I would say that’s a key piece of advice. And I would say another piece of advice is, again, tech is moving really fast obviously with AI. So really try to look around corners and think about how can you be innovating? I do believe the innovation mindset is really important even when you are building. I mean, I even found this with tech companies and products I built is that we You’re constantly innovating, right? You’re constantly thinking about, well, what do you need to build in an integration? Is that changing? Is there another tool that your customers may want to use? Do you need to look at how to integrate that? How do you need to constantly evolve your feature set? What do you need to be doing so constantly looking at evolving, innovating, building. And I believe that that’s something that, you know, most founders will do naturally. But but if you’re building something in legal tech space, again, because the sector is moving fast and AI is moving really fast, thinking about how you can continue to be innovating your product and your offering. Yeah, I love how you’re always looking forwards. You know, it’s such a sort of forward focused mindset, and it’s been really interesting to learn more about your journey. And like you say, some of the authentic stories there and some of the lessons you’ve learned from some of the failings, but of course, a lot of the successes along the way, if our listeners, which I’m sure they are going to want to do, want to learn more about your career or indeed the law, innovation, agency or law, where can they go? To find out more, feel free to share any website links or social media handles. We’ll also share them with this episode for you too. Yeah. Thank you Rob I appreciate it. Well, yeah, definitely. People can find me on LinkedIn. I’m there. They can find me on Substack at Monica Zent. They can find me with the Venture Legal newsletter. I publish that on LinkedIn and will be publishing on Substack. You can also find find us at group.com. Law, innovation Agency.com. And we’d love to hear from listeners. And it’s been a real pleasure to be here today and an honor to be on your show. Oh, it’s the pleasure is all ours. I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks so much once again. So from all of us here on the Legally Speaking podcast sponsored by Clio. Wishing you lots of continued success with your future pursuits. But for now. Over and out. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world leading content and collaboration of the Legally Speaking Club over on discord. Go to our website www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com. There’s a link to join our community there. Over and out.