Is AI the future of law? This week, I’m speaking with Tom Martin, the CEO & Founder of Lawdroid, an AI-driven company making waves in the legal industry. Tom shares how AI can help lawyers work smarter, not harder and what it means to make technology accessible to every legal professional. If you’re curious about the evolution of legal tech and want to glimpse into the next big trends, this episode is for you. Go give it a listen now!

So why should you be listening in? 
You can hear Rob and Tom discussing:

• AI as a Collaborator and Co-pilot
• Lawdroid’s Mission
• Legal Tech Product Versatility
• AI in Legal Practice
• Hybrid AI Solutions

Connect with Tom here – https://ca.linkedin.com/in/thomasgmartin

Transcript

We’ve been here for eight years and we’ll be here for many, many more.

00:04

Viewing AIS and Oracle is the incorrect mindset.

00:06

So what’s the correct mindset?

00:08

The correct mindset, I would argue, is to view AI as a collaborator.

00:12

You know, it’s a helpful assistant.

00:15

And hence the reason why Copilot sticks really well is because that’s what it’s like.

00:19

It’s a copilot that is there to help you succeed.

00:23

We’re not going to be replaced by the new stuff that comes out.

00:26

It’s actually going to make what we provide even better.

00:29

On today’s Legally Speaking podcasts, I’m delighted to be joined by Tom Martin.

00:34

Tom attended Yale University and the University of California.

00:38

Of law.

00:39

He is the CEO and Founder of Lord Droid, an intelligent automation company with a mission to promote justice everywhere.

00:46

Tom is also the cofounder of the American Legal Technology.

00:49

Tom will also be joining the Suffolk University Law School as Adjunct Professor.

00:54

Passionate about transforming legal practise through innovation and ensuring technologies accessible to every lawyer, Tom’s mission is simple.

01:01

Work smarter, not harder.

01:04

So a very big warm welcome, Tom.

01:07

Hey, Rod, thank you so much.

01:08

I’m so excited to be here.

01:10

Oh, it’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the Legally Speaking Podcast.

01:14

And before we dive into all your amazing projects and experiences and what you’re getting up to currently, we do have a little icebreaker question here on the Legally Speaking Podcast, which is on the scale of one to 1010 being very real.

01:28

What would you rate the hit TV series suits in terms of its reality of the law, if you’ve seen it, on the scale of one to 1010 being really real?

01:38

One being really bad, yeah.

01:41

To be honest, I haven’t really followed it.

01:43

I’ve seen a couple of episodes.

01:44

So from what I’ve seen, I’d rate it around A7 or like a an it depends answer.

01:54

We’ll go with an It Depends 7.

01:56

And with that, move swiftly on to talk all about you, Tom.

01:59

So would you mind by kicking off telling our listeners a bit about your background and career journey?

02:04

Yeah, happy to.

02:04

I’ll try to condense it because it’s been a long one, just over 25 years now.

02:10

Which is hard to believe, but I’ve worked as a practising lawyer.

02:13

I’ve founded my legal technology company 8 years ago, but I’ve been working in legal tech for.

02:18

Over a decade, if not longer, and justice recently I have been I accepted an offer to be an adjunct professor at Suffolk Law School.

02:28

So there’s a lot of things that I’m into and, you know, all of it keeps me going and interested and excited about the next day.

02:36

Yeah.

02:36

And we have lots of mutual friends in the world of legal, legal technology.

02:40

Mitch Jackson being one who’s also been on the show.

02:42

And you know, you’ve got a huge network and do some really great things and got your own show.

02:47

But let’s maybe start with.

02:48

With Lord Royd, because you know Lordroid, I understand the sort of a legal AI company dedicated to helping lawyers increase their productivity.

02:55

So can you tell us a little bit more about that and what was the sort of, you know, the, the initiation, I guess the initiative where it will come from?

03:03

Yeah, the initiative behind it was basically experimentation.

03:08

You know, I think I encourage everyone, especially now with generative AI, to keep an open mind, be curious, and experiment because that’s how it started.

03:15

I just was trying to scratch my own itch, so to speak, and as having my own law firm and wanting to do things on a budget and not spend as much money as I might otherwise do, I created tools to help me do things quicker, better, faster.

03:34

And that’s exactly what La Droid is there to do.

03:38

You know, we have a copilot like everyone else that does provide some helpful legal skills that are powered by generative AI.

03:46

But we also, and I think this makes us unique.

03:49

We have a platform where you could build your own custom agents.

03:53

And so the two of those combined provide a lot of versatility, a lot of.

03:59

Ability for lawyers and law firms to power themselves.

04:02

Without having to build it themselves.

04:05

I like that.

04:06

And that’s the thing, isn’t it?

04:07

Because you know, there’s there’s a resistance because of maybe that knowledge gap or not sure how things work and if you can get this done for you almost model, I think that’s super powerful.

04:17

But I want to drive deeper because you, you really do know your stuff when it comes to legal technology and AI from your background and obviously what you’re working on currently in terms of the, the different products.

04:27

If if, if you would just go a bit further in terms of builder, copilot and labs, my understanding.

04:32

You know, explain these products and you know, how do they differ and you know, the benefits ultimately to to law firms.

04:39

Sure.

04:40

Well, let’s start with the last one, Labs.

04:42

Labs is really the consultancy bit of the business.

04:46

So like I engage with projects one-on-one with different organisations, a lot of legal aid organisations over theyears that has been a great partnership.

04:56

They’ve helped to not only grow like the skills and you know, the expertise that we have, but has underwritten a lot of the SAS platform in its growth.

05:08

Builder.

05:10

Umm, it’s hard to get into all of the detail, but it’s, it started out as a chat bot platform, right?

05:16

So it’s no code build your own chat bot at the beginning where I was very, you know, if then statements and you know, if you choose this route, you go down that way and you choose your own adventure kind of thing.

05:30

Now, though, we’ve added a generative AI layer while preserving.

05:35

The existing structure and so it’s a hybrid platform.

05:39

It’s not just generative AI.

05:40

It has both and it has the strength of both.

05:44

Document automation is natively built into it.

05:48

We can integrate with external APIs, we can send data out to web hooks.

05:53

It’s really pretty amazing.

05:55

Some use cases for it are within 5 minutes.

05:58

You could spin up your own AI receptionist.

06:02

Right.

06:03

So adding some real value very quickly, like you don’t have to outsource that, you don’t have to.

06:08

Pay somebody to mechanically answer the phone and take messages, route calls and do all of that.

06:13

It could do it for you.

06:15

Umm, second use case, which is very popular is lead capture.

06:19

So people are going to your website, you don’t want to lose that business and you can capture that, capture their interest with the chat bot that you know engages them in conversation and moves them towards getting the console scheduled.

06:33

And those are just two of them.

06:36

Lastone that I’ll mention is that there’s a generative AI bot which is also extremely popular.

06:41

You put in all the information and knowledge you want it to be an expert at.

06:46

And then it can answer questions on the family about that.

06:48

It does an amazing job.

06:50

And we’re model agnostic.

06:51

So it’s not just open AI.

06:53

We also integrate with Entropic Google.

06:58

Cohere and Llama 3.1, sothere’s a lot of versatility there, like I mentioned.

07:04

And then Copilot.

07:07

It’s really meant to be an assistant where you sit down and you could use it a lot like ChatGPT or Claude, except the differences.

07:15

We curate it behind the scenes.

07:17

So we pick the right model for the right task and we also make it push button easy.

07:22

So instead of you having to become prompt engineer, which lawyers do not want to do, they don’t have the time, they don’t have the patience for that.

07:31

They could just press a button that says, you know, summarise all references to the smoking gun in this deposition transcript and it does it right.

07:40

They don’t have to figure it out.

07:42

So that’s the advantage of using.

07:45

You know, Lodi copilot is that it’s an all in one convenient.

07:50

That’s tailored just for lawyers and I love it.

07:54

And look to some people listening to this, they may think this is super advanced.

07:58

I take the view that this is now this stuff should be very much part of your legal practise.

08:05

And again, Jack Newton, mutual friend of ours was saying, you know, AI is not going to replace lawyers, but it’s going to replace those that choose not to use it.

08:12

And you know, obviously you’re creating wonderful tools and you know, things that ultimately can make us more efficient, get more client centred, deliver.

08:20

Higher quality of service, I guess what do you say to law firm owners, people thinking about starting their law firm that might be anti tech, if you like, maybe anti AI, you know, in terms of that mindset, because I feel like we need to to change the mindset for tech for good.

08:37

And I see everything that you’re doing for good to, to to really improve lawyers lives and all the good things that go with that.

08:44

But what would you say to people that perhaps not quite there yet to give them the words of encouragement and also perhaps.

08:50

Of the things that go for their head in terms of risk and how good is it, all of those sort of things.

08:56

Yeah, the first thing I want to say is kind of like proving my bona fides right.

08:59

Like I, I’m one of you.

09:01

I’m a lawyer too.

09:03

I’ve, I’ve been practising for over 25 years.

09:06

Everything I’ve been doing has been trying to, to help people, not only clients, but also other lawyers.

09:12

I established the American Legal Technology Awards with a couple of friends of mine, Patrick Palace and Cat Moon, and we highlight and hold up examples of people that are doing good in the world with legal technology.

09:23

So this is where I’m coming from.

09:26

And you know, in addition to also founding my legal tech company, which I learned a lot from from customers just like you.

09:35

So with all of that combined, what I see is that this is now a sea change.

09:40

Like it when I was talking about this eight years ago, when I first started the company, it was more theoretical.

09:45

It was like this is going to happen in the in the future now.

09:48

You know, all these references to the future of law that I see out there should be taken down because just like Rob, just like you said.

09:57

This is now and just got back from Madrid talking about this that the future is now.

10:02

And I think the main thing you you mentioned, Jack, I mean the the Clio legal trends report that came out.

10:09

You know, that’s what puts it in stark focus, which is that a year ago, 19% of legal professionals were using AI in some way.

10:19

Not all of them were using it voraciously every single day, but there was some spectrum of usage last year at 19%.

10:27

Now that’s figure jumped, has jumped to 79% and.

10:33

You know, it’s just, it’s just amazing, like you don’t have this smooth adoption curve.

10:39

Like you normally see where there’s early adopters and, you know, sceptics and all that this is.

10:44

A very acute wave and So what it means is the people that miss that wave are going to miss out and so that’s my message to the ones that might be sceptical is thatI don’t think we really have the luxury right now of scepticism yeah noand I I agree with you and look we we talk a lot about tech for good and obviously Clio support our show and you know absolutely there are tools here that can can really make lawyers life so much better and and and so much enable you to to perform the.

11:15

But a, a higher output and, you know, delivered just so many extra benefits.

11:19

Tom, we’ve talked about the good stuff about Lord Royd and, you know, building it out and all the great things it does.

11:24

But any entrepreneurial pursuit does come with the odd challenge or two.

11:28

So what have been some of the challenges you faced during the process and how have you been able to overcome them?

11:35

Any lessons you could share along the way?

11:37

I think one of the biggest challenges for any business owner.

11:42

Including lawyers is just keeping the doors open.

11:45

You got to have income to keep the doors open.

11:49

And you know, going down the VC route has not really been an option for me.

11:55

I’ve been bootstrapping the whole time for eight years, been profitable.

11:59

And the way that I’ve done it is by keeping a mix of, you know, the SAS platform, but also like the projects that go on and one hand washes the other, you know, they really support each other.

12:12

And I think that that paradigm.

12:14

Is a successful one in this climate of AI because.

12:18

As you’ve seen, there’s been a just explosion of legal AI started.

12:23

I mean AI startups in general, but also like legal tech, AI startups and.

12:30

I think being able to be there for the long haul and having.

12:35

You know, the underwriting from your own customers to support that is, you know, that’s required for survival in this climate.

12:44

Yeah, no, really, really important point and and thank you for.

12:48

For stressing that I want to look back to, to trends ’cause I, I agree that the latest Clio trends report is, is, is really eye opening actually.

12:56

And I remember also talking to Jack about how it took, you know with the adoption of cloud nearly 15 years to convince lawyers and how that like you said before the luxury of AI is, you know get on the bus now or, or fear that the bus has gone for a forever.

13:09

And so that 79% of lawyers statistic does sort of resonate and, and hopefully it’s only going to go that way but what are some of the the trends that.

13:18

Looking for or looking at or expect to come in the coming years, particularly up this sort of what I’d say still quite early stages of AI, but potentially going to get better and better as every year comes around.

13:29

Yeah.

13:29

I think that the thing that’s difficult here is just how quickly the escalation of AI is in terms of how much better it’s getting almost on a daily basis.

13:41

We see new research coming out, new models coming out.

13:47

Just, you know, recently, which now when people hear this, at some point it’s going to be dated.

13:51

But you know, Anthropic just came out with its ability to remote, you know, remotely control your computer.

13:59

That’s actually something we were working on at La Droid.

14:05

And but now we could probably just tap into their API Entropic to do that, but that also changes the game.

14:13

My point being that projecting 5-10 years in the future is extremely difficult.

14:19

I one of the things that I talked about at the panel in Madrid that I came back from is that a lot of the current applications that we see the current use cases.

14:30

For AI in legal has been a bit of building a faster horse.

14:36

Right, in the sense that it’s not going fundamental, it’s not, it’s not going down to the principles of how do we improve transportation, right.

14:45

It’s, it’s about like building a faster horse.

14:48

And I think the five or 10 year plan is going to be about transformation.

14:52

It’s going to be about reducing things back to first principles and how we accomplish what we’re trying to accomplish.

15:01

Using these new miraculous abilities that we have.

15:04

And so you know.

15:06

Job descriptions are gonna drastically change, as well as probably how we fundamentally interact with the legal system.

15:12

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16:01

Now back to the show.

16:02

I get excited by this I think because you know, there’s so much.

16:06

Unity ahead of us, but before we we sort of run away with all of this, you know, we want to try and educate and inform on this show as much as possible.

16:17

And obviously you’re speaking to lawyers, people in the world of legal daily.

16:20

What are some of the misconceptions that you hear most often when it comes to AI and the law?

16:26

And how can legal professionals have a better understanding of AIS potential?

16:32

Yeah, so one thing I talk about a lot, which is a very basic thing, but I, I hope that you know, some of the people that hear this, hear this, is that in terms of mindset, it’s extremely important like you mentioned.

16:46

And so the mindset switch that I really want to highlight is that I think the mindset that gets a lot of people in trouble is thinking of AI as an Oracle, right That it is.

17:01

An omniscient.

17:02

You know ever correct entity that you can ask something and it’ll give you a perfect answer, or that you could ask it to do something like write you a motion and it needs to produce something perfect and then when it doesn’t you just throw it out the window, right?

17:19

So that mindset of viewing AI as an Oracle is the incorrect mindset.

17:24

So what’s the correct mindset?

17:25

The correct mindset, I would argue, is to view AI as a collaborator.

17:30

You know, it’s a helpful assistant.

17:32

And hence the reason why Copilot sticks really well is because that’s what it’s like.

17:37

It’s a copilot that is there to help you succeed.

17:41

And if you view it that way, then you’re not going to make the mistakes.

17:46

That, you know, the Schwartz case highlights, for example, that you just believe it wholeheartedly and you file it in federal court.

17:53

You want to do that?

17:55

Yeah.

17:55

And look, yeah, I think it’s a really good example.

17:58

And I think, you know, that mindset is, is so important.

18:01

I would just encourage people just rewind that point of what Dom just said.

18:04

Listen to it again, adopt that correct mindset and you’ll you’ll absolutely be right.

18:09

And I was always taught collaboration as domination and treat that with AI as well.

18:12

See it as that collaboration partner that can absolutely help you.

18:16

Sam, you’ve had tonnes of industry recognition, you’ve been recognised in Jack, we’ve mentioned him already, Jack Newton’s CEO, you’re the founder of Clio.

18:23

In his book The Client Centred Law Firm, he states client centred innovation is not just for the Am law 100 firms with big tech budgets.

18:31

With the help of obviously Lord Droid, I believe that law firm, Palace Law, they created what it’s called a pack bot, the chat bot that helps assess workers compensation claims.

18:40

So in what other ways?

18:41

You gave a few earlier on, but I, I just think it’s brilliant the work you’re doing has Lord Royd assisted.

18:46

Particularly those small to medium sized law firms who perhaps don’t have the budgets of some of these larger firms.

18:53

Yeah, and I was, I was very flattered at, you know, when when Jack mentioned Lodroid in in his book, which is, and I’m not just saying this because he mentioned us, but it is a really good book about helping your practise be client centred.

19:09

You know, like one of one of the use cases I mentioned is lead capture.

19:14

And so that’s been very popular and it kind of gets to brass tacks too, right?

19:18

It’s, it provides fundamental first value to a law firm.

19:22

And so we’ve worked with a number of law firms in helping them to do client intake and lead capture.

19:31

The thing I like about that is it’s a great way to to get them in the door.

19:35

At a very affordable price point where they get to see the value and then they also get to see what else they could do.

19:42

With the Lodi platform, because that’s only the beginning, there’s a very like long journey where they can automate more and more of their firm as much as they feel comfortable with.

19:54

And and so that’s that’s one way we’ve helped.

19:58

You know, Scott Talkoff in Southern California, he has this very unique practise and hegets a tonne of leads on his website and we’ve helped him to capture more of them.

20:08

Conte Moore in Florida is another lawyer that we’ve helped out.

20:14

To increase Hurley capture and she has a wonderful, very successful business.

20:20

So, you know, their stories are the ones that keep me going because I know that it’s not just me doing something abstractly in AI and talking about that as a thought leader, but that there’s actually people that, you know, I’m responsible and accountable to and that we’re delivering value.

20:39

Yeah, absolutely.

20:39

And then that is the key, isn’t it?

20:41

It’s delivering good quality value and you’ve obviously been doing.

20:44

That time and time again you’ve talked about obviously coming back from Madrid, you, you talk at lots of events, but you also have the Lordroid AI conference, which I believe earlier this year was hosted featuring two of our previous guests as well, actually the wonderful Jackie Schaefer and Mitch Jackson, who you mentioned earlier.

21:00

Again, for our listeners, what was the focus of the event and what were some of the highlights for you and some of the key takeaways?

21:09

Yeah, I mean, it was a big challenge that I threw at myself because I just like to do that sometimes.

21:16

But the point of it was that, you know, Lodroid had never had its own conference before.

21:22

We did it entirely virtually so everyone could attend.

21:25

And I wanted it to make basically a an expansive free for all about everything that AI like all of the different considerations from like the ethical implications to.

21:37

You know, educational issues and everything in between.

21:42

So it was a full day, ran the whole gamut.

21:47

We had amazing experts, got it all on tape and it’s on YouTube now and we’ve gotten hundreds and hundreds of views of those those episodes.

21:58

But it’s it’s just been an amazing educational experience and.

22:03

You know, I, I really have to think everyone that was involved with it, including Jordan Furlong, who was our keynote speaker.

22:10

For doing just such a wonderful job and we actually had at the height of it, I think it was over 3000 people registered to attend the event.

22:21

And then I looked at the geographical distribution that we could check out on the back end analytics and it was every continent except Antarctica.

22:31

We didn’t have any Penguins watching.

22:33

Yeah, not quite yet.

22:34

You know, they’ve not tuned into AI just yet, but they’ll get there.

22:37

They’ll get there.

22:38

Well, that’s incredible.

22:39

And look, I think it’s, again, testament to the work that you’ve been doing.

22:43

And Leeds nicely actually onto the power of community.

22:45

What I wanted to ask next, and it’s something I’m passionate about in terms of, you know, this legal community.

22:50

But you, you’ve been doing this tremendously well with the the Lordori community and manifesto.

22:54

So could you tell our listeners about the Lord Roy community and manifesto and tell us a little bit more?

23:00

Yeah, so Lodoid Manifesto is my sub stack.

23:02

And I put out articles as well as podcasts about, you know, legal technology, not only AI, but also AI, of course.

23:12

And yeah, put it out on a weekly basis.

23:15

I like to think about things for a while and then write about it.

23:17

So it’s not, it’s not like your daily deluge of AI news, but some more thoughtful pieces on occasion and.

23:27

To me, that brings together 5000 people.

23:30

That are subscribers and I get to communicate with them every week and hear back from them.

23:36

And I’ve found it to be extremely, umm, you know, rewarding and you know, all of these little things that I put together, put together with friends like the American Legal Technology Awards, like the Lodoid AI conference, by bringing out all of those people together that are amazing.

23:54

It really comes from, you know, I moved to Canada.

23:57

My, my wife is from North Vancouver where, where I live now.

24:02

I came here 12 years ago.

24:03

And when I moved here from Los Angeles where I grew up, I didn’t know anyone here, you know, besides a few of my wife’s family members.

24:13

And so one of the first things I did, I just thought, what do I have as an interest to hold in common with people?

24:20

Well, it was legal technology.

24:22

And so I.

24:23

Co founded Vancouver Legal Hackers with a few other guys and that was really my window into finding a community.

24:32

And that was the start of this.

24:34

And so for me, it was so rewarding and getting to talk and collaborate with like-minded people.

24:41

Just it, it worked so well that I figured I’d do this throughout my life.

24:46

Yeah, absolutely.

24:48

And and what a great job you you have done.

24:50

I guess looking forward because you, you, you talked earlier about it’s quite hard to predict the next 5-10 years.

24:56

So kind of putting your entrepreneurial hat on, what future plan with that knowledge, what future plans do you have for for Law Droid or how are you going to go about ensuring what you produce is going to be fit for purpose in light of the fact that things are moving at lightning speed?

25:13

Well, again, like I advised everyone to keep an open mind and stay curious, which means that we are experimenting with the new things that come out.

25:20

Like I mentioned, we were exploring the remote control of computer systems prior to to Anthropic coming out with it.

25:28

But there are little things like that.

25:30

You just keep keep your ear to the ground and experiment, see if it actually fits what you’re trying to do.

25:35

And, and what I’m trying to do with Law Droid is, is to empower lawyers and actually other business owners.

25:42

To use AI to automate.

25:46

The boring.

25:47

Route tasks within their office, and even more elevated ones too.

25:53

So that they can have more time, so they can accomplish more, but they could also take on more business if if they choose to.

26:01

And that’s the promising future that I see.

26:03

Like I might not be able to predict the exact way we’re going to interact or the exact product we’re going to have in the future, but the platform that we’ve built it is fit to purpose in that it takes advantage of all every single new wave of.

26:18

New models, new technology, new advancements all along the way over eight years.

26:24

And so I think because of that, we’ve been here for eight years and we’ll be here for many, many more because we could leverage it to our advantage.

26:33

We’re not going to be replaced by the new stuff that comes out.

26:36

It’s actually going to make what we provide even better.

26:39

Yeah.

26:40

And again, I, I just think that’s incredibly exciting.

26:43

And I think there’s a real opportunity for, for everybody to, to, to win and get involved with the the great things that you’re doing.

26:50

You referenced it earlier, but I want to talk about it a little bit more because I think it’s great.

26:54

As a, as a co-founder of the American Legal Technology, you know, you are an organisation basically showcasing excellence, creative innovation tech within the legal industry.

27:03

So would you mind just telling us a little bit more about it?

27:05

Because I think it’s, it’s fantastic.

27:08

Yeah, so it actually originated, you know, in your neck of the woods.

27:14

I was, you know, Lodoid was was part of.

27:17

Well, we were nominated for an award with the British Legal Technology Awards.

27:21

And so one year it was actually a project that I’d worked on with Patrick Palace.

27:26

And so Patrick and I were out in London for the British Legal Technology Awards.

27:31

And it’s just an amazing event.

27:34

Cat Moon, just amazing person.

27:37

She’s so educated and.

27:39

Good at what she does, it seemed natural to bring her into it with an academic focus as well.

27:45

And that was really it.

27:47

It was just like three friends wanting to do something cool together.

27:51

You know, we call it law prom or the Oscars of legal tech.

27:57

And yeah, that’s that was the origin story.

28:01

But so far, after five years, it’s really gotten.

28:04

Gotten some legs underneath it and this last time.

28:08

In Austin, TX, right before Clio, the Clio Cloud Conference, it was just amazing experience.

28:15

It was a really unique venue destination event and everyone really enjoyed themselves.

28:20

Yeah.

28:20

And I have to say I first hand had the pleasure of experiencing one of your events in in Nashville the year before as well.

28:26

And with, you know, you incredible people you have there, Bob Ambrogi, so many other people that go there support and you know, the people that you highlight and shine a light on who are doing great work.

28:34

And I think the work that you, Patrick and Kat do together is, is, is, is tremendous.

28:38

I want to talk about your most recent appointment.

28:41

You referenced very early on into the beginning of the conversation because in the spring you will be joining the Suffolk University Law School as an adjunct professor.

28:49

So you’re going to be teaching a course, as I understand it, on all things generative AI and its role in legal services delivery.

28:56

So what are you looking for to most when you take that on?

29:02

The students, you know, just like connecting with them, their energy, I mean, I’m going to, I’m going to learn.

29:10

I’m excited to learn so much from them.

29:13

You know, I had the pleasure of of Co teaching a class with my friend Kat Moon at Vanderbilt earlier this year.

29:22

And actually that that experience was partly what spurred me on to pursue this adjunct professor position and.

29:31

Being in her class, seeing the students, talking with them, their different point of view.

29:36

Their different mindset, it was all very exciting, encouraging, took me back.

29:43

And umm, that’s what I’m looking forward to is like getting to share with them what I know and also hearing what they have to say and us like enriching each other’s lives.

29:55

And I guess before we, we, we wrap up.

29:57

And I, I love that it comes from a place of giving back and really being curious as well about, you know, I always talk about having a 360 board of mentors and not just people that are, you know, above you to the side of you, but also sort of coming through and, you know, you’re absolutely keeping that sort of, you know, open mindset, but what would be your.

30:12

I guess words of wisdom, last piece of advice for aspiring lawyers looking to enter the legal tech space specifically.

30:22

Lawyers aspiring to legal tech space.

30:28

You know, what I would recommend to them is probably like, I sound like a broken record, but it’s about being, keeping an open mind and being curious.

30:35

But it’s also like one thing that I at the very, very beginning I confronted, which I think a lot of people do, is like feeling like an impostor, right?

30:45

You feel like, should I be here?

30:48

Like, do I know enough or, you know, do I have enough going on that I should be here at the table talking with everyone else?

30:56

And my advice to them is, yes, you do have enough.

31:00

You are good.

31:01

You are good enough to be here.

31:03

Don’t even question yourself.

31:04

It’s it’s about, you know, part of that curiosity is taking the first step, the 1st jump into this pool and playing with the rest of us.

31:14

And you have a lot to offer.

31:17

Don’t second guess yourself.

31:19

And I really look forward to to meeting you and getting to learn from you too.

31:25

Yeah, I love that, Tom, and I’ve loved this whole conversation.

31:27

It’s been truly enlightening, educational, inspirational, the things that you’ve been doing.

31:33

And I’m sure our listeners are going to want to know more.

31:35

So if they want to follow you, learn more about your career or indeed Lord Droid, where can they go to find out more?

31:43

Feel free to shout out any websites, any social media handles.

31:46

We’ll also make sure we share them with this episode for you too.

31:50

Well, thanks, Rob.

31:51

I mean, it’s pretty easy to find me at La.

31:54

Droid is my handle pretty much everywhere.

31:58

LAWDROID like R2D2, like law Droid and my sub stack is law droidmanifesto.

32:05

com.

32:05

I put out content articles and podcasts weekly, so please follow me there and I’d like to learn from you too.

32:12

So you know, my e-mail address is tom@lodi.

32:16

com, so feel free to reach out personally.

32:18

Brilliant.

32:19

Well, thank you ever so much once again, Tom.

32:21

It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the the show from all of us on the League of Speaking podcast sponsored by Clio.

32:26

Wishing you.

32:27

Continued success with your career, Lord Droid and indeed other future pursuits.

32:31

But for now, from all of us over and out, thank you for listening to this week’s episode.

32:36

If you like the content here, why not check out our world leading content and collaboration hub, that Legally speaking Club over on Discord.

32:46

Go to our website

32:48

www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com

32:50

for the link to join our community there over and out.