Clio Con Clips 2025 – Niamh Pollak – E14

Transcript

Robert Hanna  0:00  

Welcome to Clio con clips 2025 recorded live from Boston and proudly sponsored by Clio, the world’s leading legal technology company, transforming the legal experience for all. I’m your host, Rob Hanna, and over this special legally speaking podcast series, we’ll be bringing you exclusive conversation with the brilliant minds behind Clio, the innovators, strategists, visionaries, driving one of the most transformative companies in legal tech. Across these interviews, we’ll explore how Clio is uniting brilliance across teams, technology and communities worldwide, from AI and data to leadership culture and the future of client experience, you’ll hear from people shaping what’s next for law and redefining what’s possible for legal professionals everywhere. So whether you’re a lawyer, technologist or leader passionate about innovation, you’re in the right place. This Clio conclips 2025 is where brilliance meets purpose and the future of law take shape. Let’s get into it. The Steve, welcome to the legally speaking podcast recording live here from Boston for our Clio con clips series. 2025 sponsored by Clio. And I am delighted to be joined by name, title and organisation.

Niamh Pollak  1:15  

Niamh Pollack, Vice President of legal at Clio,

Robert Hanna  1:18  

and welcome back. The last time we chatted was in Austin, and that was all about amplifying your impact. And boy, has Cleo done that over the last 12 talks.

Niamh Pollak  1:25  

Yeah, we weren’t live.

Robert Hanna  1:29   

No, you absolutely weren’t. And before we talk all things Cleo and the year and everything else you’ve been getting up to I would love to know a fun fact about you that people here may not know a

Niamh Pollak  1:37  

fun fact, maybe not all that useful in North America, but I speak five languages. Growing up in Ireland, you have to learn foreign languages. So yeah, they’re a bit bit rusty, but you can dust them off when, when needs be. 

Robert Hanna  1:49  

So if it’s okay with you. I’m comfortable with English, so if we can carry on the conversation, I am fluent in English, and that helps a lot, absolutely

Robert Hanna  1:57  

okay. Well, look, let’s talk about the whole Clio year and things that have been going on because you’ve worked across Ireland, Canada, US and Europe. So how has that kind of international experience shaped your approach to leading a global legal team here at Clio?

Niamh Pollak  2:11  

Yeah, I think you know, being called in multiple jurisdictions as a lawyer, you have just that insider exposure to different regimes, yeah, and law societies and bar associations just have different ways of doing things. So you’re automatically connected to our clients, essentially the lawyers. You understand their own unique needs, their own compliance dependencies, and just a respect for the rule of law. It’s not a uniform global jurisdiction. And, you know, culturally respecting products launches and making sure we’re localising things according to certain jurisdictions. So, you know, having had the advantage and privilege, frankly, of having been able to travel and live around the world, I just never forget that we’re we’re all equal, but we’re different, yeah, so

Robert Hanna  2:58  

really well said, and I absolutely agree with that. And look, you know, Clio is not dipping their toe into AI leaning all in certainly. So the legal function at a company like Clio doesn’t just protect, but it also enables, which I absolutely love. But how do you balance innovation and risk when the pace of change in AI and tech is so fast?

Niamh Pollak  3:18  

You hire top talent. Yes, you partner with expert external counsel who are, you know, in the weeds on compliance and regulatory best practices, and just stay current and use AI in your own practice to stay current. You know, a lot of the time we get newsletters and news feeds, and you can almost become a little bit flippant about it, like it’s another irritation in your inbox, but there’s a minefield of valuable information there. So I do very deliberately more than just scan those emails and making sure that I try to be on the cusp of everything that’s changing globally. But again, you can’t do it all, so hire really, really good teams and partner with external counsel and trust in their advice, because they’re the subject, but they’re closer to us than you are. And politely but firmly push back when your stakeholders say, well, chat GPT told me, Well, chat GPT lies a lot, so external Council don’t yeah, just I’m going to go with the people I’m paying for the right answer, yeah. And just that bit of

Robert Hanna  4:17  

small print underneath chat GBT people might need to look at with the odd mistake that’s toning Yeah, very good point. Very good point. Okay, look in terms of products. I mean, Clio has come out the gate again this year with products, Clio payments, Clio capital. So entering a very regulated financial space, how do you ensure compliance and trust remain at the heart of the innovation that’s going on at the

Niamh Pollak  4:38  

company? Yeah, at its centre base, our clients are still consumers, consumers of legal products, and there’s optionality in the marketplace, and you just have to be very transparent and, frankly, very ethical about any type of payment product. You know, I have the task of drafting the terms and conditions, so the terms of service and connection to every single payment product, and my. Bright line rule is plain reading of the provision, plain drafting, so there’s no surprises. Everybody understands what they’re contracting for, and then making sure that my sales team are fully confident with socialising that messaging to our customers, so you never want to oversell and under deliver or just confuse your customer base. So especially with regulated products like a payment or FinTech product line, you just want to make sure your customers know exactly what they’re getting and then what not to do at the same time. So it’s education, but it’s also just being transparent.

Robert Hanna  5:31  

Yeah, I love that. I’m very clear. So people it’s easy to understand.

Niamh Pollak  5:35  

Plain reading of the contract is my mantra. I tell my team all all the time like I want it short, succinct, and I want it to be easily understood.

Robert Hanna  5:44  

So could I go as far as saying anti legal ease,

Niamh Pollak  5:49  

jargon free? It’s a kinder way of saying it. Yeah, I won’t be adding Ray’s IPSA lock at her to my craft. Leave the Latin behind and

Robert Hanna  5:58  

look, Jack was very intentional in his keynote. I think is one of the best keynotes, I think we’ve ever seen, undoubtedly, very inspiring. But Clio is the first legal tech business now to service the whole market, from solos to mid market, and now to Clio for enterprise. Clio operate, of course, and that brings a new level of complexity to the show. So how does your team support enterprise clients while maintaining agility that Clio is very well known for?

Niamh Pollak  6:20  

Yeah, I think you have to know your customer base intimately. And you know enterprise clients can and should expect a more white glove service approach. It’s a larger account. It’s it’s the stakes are bigger. Frankly, it’s a lot more users, a lot more people in the firm who are depending on this solution to really do its magic. So I think our sales team, like are more than capable of rising to the occasion, and again, just making sure that the product market fit has been really thought through before we present it to that segment, and then just bringing along on the journey like superior customer service dealing with escalations in a very, very timely manner. And sometimes you might not get it right, and just admit it and assist the customer with the remediation. And that’s going to encourage retention. And we want happy customers at the end

Robert Hanna  7:10  

of the day. Yeah, person who never made a mistake never existed, as my late grandfather said, a lawyer himself very, very true a question now, more about stakeholder management internally, you know, you reference sales legal. There’s a lot of, you know, you see a lot of things online about, you know, the Department of know, and everything else, etc, etc. But clearly not the case, because Clio is very pro collaboration, and it’s very connected as an organisation. So what tips would you give for other businesses that hyper growth businesses in terms of getting that right between the link between legal and sales? So you move forward to this business of action. I know you talk about a system of action, but yeah, what are some of the things you’ve implemented that make it real good fusion between the two?

Niamh Pollak  7:46  

Again, I think, like having really good, strong starting documentation and training your sales team so they’re fully familiar with just the vernacular, like they have all the talk tracks down. They shouldn’t really need us for the day to day routine matters, but there is an appropriate time to hand it over to us. And again, your customers want quick responses. They’re selecting a solution, and you don’t want them sitting in the weeds waiting for a turnaround. So, you know, we use AI in our practice to accelerate our processes and our speed, and it’s been a game changer like just to be able to, you know, pressure test even your own thinking or your own drafting, and I think we’re fortunate that we, we lived in a pre AI world, at least I did. I’ll know when something maybe isn’t going in the direction I want in terms of a response, and I can course correct, but again, enjoying the chaos, but being responsive and moving fast, no different to any high growth company. Yeah,

Robert Hanna  8:39  

absolutely. And you were touching on there where I wanted to go next, actually, because you do sit at the intersection of law and tech, but how is AI changing the way in house legal teams operate, both in terms of legal strategy, but also day to day work? Any examples you

Niamh Pollak  8:52  

would give, I think that you have less reliance, frankly, on external counsel, except for maybe very discreet, as you know, we talked about regulatory payment matters, where you just can’t miss a beat. But for day to day, even more complex, day to day matters. There’s just an absolute wealth of information you can mine from Ai. If you use a finely tuned AI solution that is the key, do not use chat, GPT as your default, even Gemini or copilot. These are great tools, and they’re getting better every day, but I always recommend to lawyers to use a finely tuned legal AI solution, because the returns you’re getting are from legal data sets, not the internet writ large. Yeah. So you know, we have a tracker. Actually, with the tool we use, we use a tool called gcai, which has been really a game changer for many in House lawyers, and it shows our metrics, and it shows you the time you’ve saved. Wow, you’re actually freeing yourself up to do. What I like to say is the more sophisticated, deep thinking, because a lot of the routine stuff can be taken off your plate with AI like red light. Agreements, creating tables, you know, something tedious, like creating a table or an issue list. AI can do that for you. So I have a mandatory AI use case in my team. Everyone has to to love AI, frankly, and we’re all like super users at this point, and

Robert Hanna  10:15  

that’s obviously why Clio is doing so well as a business. And we’ve had a whole raft of guests come on the show. One was piers Linney, former Shark Tank investor and lawyer himself, and he talks a lot about a value pyramid in terms of it doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer, if you’re an accountant, if you’re an insurer, you as a service provider, technology is coming in and filling in the mundane, and it’s going to continue rising up the value. So you as a service provider, need to find a way as your human input to add value to your clients. And like you said, This frees up a lot of times. You can use that way you train to be a lawyer, so you can add that value, give that real creative thought, have that empathy, and really add value. And I think that’s what’s super exciting about AI and people who embrace it, but then also ensure that they bring that human touch Exactly.

Niamh Pollak  10:56  

And I think, you know, we sometimes forget and assume that the law is stagnant. It’s all been written, and therefore the AI will almost like cannibalise the legal industry, whereas we’re constantly iterating and changing the law. And if we now have the time, as I said, to think the deeper, more sophisticated thoughts we can just keep improving the law. There’s a better way of doing things. Maybe laws shouldn’t be on the books indefinitely. Maybe they should expire after a period of time, and then you pressure test, is this piece of legislation still fit for purpose? Did the legislatures of 30 years ago have the same future context we now have? So I just see AI as a way to accelerate all of us into like, a better way of organising society, frankly. So that can only be a win.

Robert Hanna  11:40  

And I love that positive outlook, and it’s exactly what the view we share as well. And I think it’s super exciting this year’s theme we talked about last year, Empire impact, obviously in Austin, but this year, it’s all about uniting brilliance. And obviously it’s been very clear with velex and shared who I could go on and on. But what does uniting brilliance mean within your legal team, and how do you encourage collaboration between lawyers, engineers, business leaders and beyond.

Niamh Pollak  12:03  

Again, plain English, you know, translating the jargon. But also challenge yourself to learn new jargon, like understand the tech speak. Get really, really into the product launch cycle. You know, the demand for product Council is is growing. The demand for legal Ops is growing. So don’t just view yourself as an excellent practitioner. You have to be more multifaceted and legal operations, as I said, That’s intake, matter management, the user experience, the journey of how they use us as a team. That’s all critical, because if your stakeholders aren’t happy, then you know at the end of the day, you’re only as good as your last goal. So yeah, I just encourage the team to seek out mentors and just challenge themselves to, you know, stretch beyond their limits, I

Robert Hanna  12:48  

guess. Yeah, and a mind once stretch never returns, as I was once told. So I think that’s very, very true. Okay, yeah, and you were touching on there. And I’ll go a bit deeper, because many in House lawyers want to become true business partners, not just advisors. So what’s your advice for in house counsel who want to elevate their impact?

Niamh Pollak  13:05  

Yeah, I think if you work at a company like Clio, you don’t have the choice to be only a legal advisor. You’re fully immersed in a business, and you’re you’re assisting so many different teams with so many different niche areas, and inevitably, you’re going to find that your your practice area, and you’re just understanding of the business in general has broadened beyond, like, even your own expectations. So it’s not really a question of you having the luxury of maybe staying in a silo. You are, by default, un siloed. But just come with it, with a curiosity, and just spend a lot of time with your senior stakeholders, and also be humble you don’t understand an acronym, like, maybe look it up, or ask somebody, and have the humility to say, like, I don’t understand what you’re saying. Yeah, and, and then you will understand. So, yeah. I mean, I have a great team, and they’ve had to really rise to the occasion this year because I’ve been so tied up with the velex deal. So they have been pushed outside of their comfort zone, which is appropriate. I hire, you know, folks who want to thrive in the chaos and the the excitement that is Clio, but you know, then we come to Cleo Khan, and everything runs like clockwork. So yes, it sure does. The Chaos translates into this, this wonderful experience for our clients,

Robert Hanna  14:19  

absolutely. And I guess before we look to take a zoom out and get your kind of thoughts on Clio Conn and highlight looking ahead what excites you most about how the legal profession and the role of in house counsel will evolve in the coming years.

Niamh Pollak  14:31  

So the first part is how the legal profession will evolve. I absolutely love the combination of the practice of law and the business of law, and the way, you know, the tech tools are there. I mean, players just launched a bunch of them. You’re using agents to guide you through your day to day, intake, workflow, output, again, it gives you the time to do this deep thinking. It does feel like we’re at this real pivot point where the old days are well, in. Really gone. So very excited about the future for private practitioners and then for in house. I think it’s a similar path, a little bit different in terms of some of the needs. We’re not billing, we’re not dealing with external clients. It’s all internal facing. But we do need similar tech solutions and something as simple as intake and matter management and tracking of a matter you know, it’s something that the in house team is more heavily leaning into. From a tech stock perspective, what I would love to see in the future is a tech solution for very large scale m&a transactions. Okay, I’m in the middle of one, as people may know, we’re at the rounding the bend of the vlex deal, which is close to closing, and surprisingly, it’s very much a email, PDF and checklist based interface, yes. And I think, you know, in 2025 that’s just not acceptable anymore, frankly. And I would challenge any entrepreneur and legal tech, including Cleo, to produce a solution where we can interact real time in a platform. And we already have the interlinks of the world. We have the document, the sites for diligence, and we just need to, we need to take that much, much further, where we can all interact, rather than having email updates where a human, frankly, is required to share the status update. It’s a very human centric process, and it works, and that’s why people are comfortable with it. But I think you know, as VP of legal in a legal tech company doing the largest m&a deal in Canadian legal tech history, global legal tech history, to have a email, zoom and checklist and PDF process, it feels like there’s an opportunity there, and I think in no time, someone’s going to seize that opportunity, and I will be the first person to trial that product. I demand that all external counsel follow me, you know, if they’re working with me, to trial this product, and do M and A in a real time live update environment where we’re all collaborating the same portal.

Robert Hanna  17:06  

Sounds like we’ve got a willing beta tester absolutely Well, look, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you back before I let you go. What’s been the highlight for you of Clio con?

Niamh Pollak  17:15  

2025 the highlight of Clio con? I think the product announcements. Yeah, my team was heavily involved in all of the drafting for, you know, the terms of service. So we are so intimately familiar with every component and every feature, and, of course, the velex announcement, you know, everything we’re doing with our our incredible partners at the vlex team, the Vincent AI tool. We’re so excited about, you know, the closing and just combining the two companies, and what the V Lex team have done over the last 25 years, you know, Angel and Luis has been nothing short of astounding and and that’s why they were so attractive to us as a target. And we’re absolutely thrilled to be, I said, rounding the band and closing this deal. And the next time we’re at clearcon, it’ll be one company. So we’re just very, very excited about that. Yeah, and we’re very excited about

Robert Hanna  18:04  

coming back here to Boston next year, where cliocon 2026 is. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you back on the legally speaking podcast. If people want to know more about Clio or indeed, get in touch for yourself or maybe interested in learning more about what’s going on, where’s the best place for them to go? Feel free to share any websites or any social media handles.

Niamh Pollak  18:20  

Yeah, you know, you can find me on LinkedIn. I do check messages. I will respond to them. Or you can reach out to me through, through Cleo, through my email at Cleo, which, you know, I think you can find online, yeah, or just connect with any of your stakeholders at Cleo, and they can make an introduction. Well, it just

Robert Hanna  18:36  

needs to say thank you so much once again for joining me back here on the show. I’m looking forward to hopefully chatting with you next year. That’s now from all year. But for now, from all of us on the league’s being podcast sponsored by Cleo 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 Hub, 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.