What happens when a lawyer becomes one of the world’s first legal engineers?

This week, I’m joined by Catherine Bamford, Founder and CEO of BamLegal and a true pioneer in legaltech; Catherine reveals how document automation is transforming the legal profession, the biggest misconceptions lawyers have about AI and why legal engineering is the future of law.

If you’re curious about how tech is reshaping the legal profession, from inside out, this episode is for you. Go give it a listen now!

So why should you be listening in? 

You can hear Rob and Catherine discussing:

– Legal Engineering and Automation: How They Help Lawyers Without Replacing Them

– Why Marginal Gains Matter in the Legal Industry

– Overcoming the “Too Bespoke” Myth

– Career Progression and Transformation Through Curiosity

– How We Can Properly Utilise Techonology as a Tool for Justice

Connect with Catherine here – https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherine-bamford-bamlegal

Transcript

Catherine Bamford  0:00  

When lawyers think their areas bespoke, it’s the nuances that are bespoke. Legal engineering is not just about the innovation and trying brand new stuff. A lot of the books I read and a lot of things I like are about marginal gains and continuous improvement. So a little bit here, a little bit there. It could be as simple as, Do you have a single seller or multiple sellers? No one went to law school to put an S at the end of the word seller and change grammar from has to have. That’s what automation can do for you, and you could then put in your nuanced bespoke details if you need.

Robert Hanna  0:30  

On today’s legally speaking podcast, I’m delighted to be joined by Katherine Bamford. Catherine is the CEO and founder of BamLegal. She has over 15 years of experience working with the world’s leading law firms to help them implement document automation. As a legal engineer, Catherine has automated hundreds of documents whilst building due diligence platforms and contract review tools. She has been named the Financial Times top 10 legal technologist European women in law tech winner, and is a woman of legal tech honoree. So a very big, warm welcome to the show, Catherine.

Catherine Bamford  1:01  

Thank you, Rob. I’m so happy to be here.

Robert Hanna  1:05  

Oh well, we’re so happy to finally have you speaking off. Mike, I know it’s taken a while for us to to make this happen, but before we get into all your amazing work and things you’ve been getting up to over the past years, we do have a customer icebreaker question here on the leaders being podcast, which is on the scale of one to 1010, being very real. What would you rate the hit TV series suit in terms of its reality of the law, if you’ve seen it?

Catherine Bamford  1:30  

So I’m sorry. I’m one of those people that have never watched it. I don’t really watch much television at all. My legal intro was more of Ali mcbeal back in those days, which wasn’t realistic at all. But yeah, zero pursuits, I’m afraid,

Robert Hanna  1:46  

and we’ll move swiftly on. And so let’s start with then Catherine, a bit about your background and career journey. Tell will our listeners a bit about that?

Catherine Bamford  1:53  

Yeah, sure. So I started off actually even before university, so don’t want to make this too long a story, but something that that some people don’t realise is I actually quit school at 17, so didn’t get a levels, didn’t finish school, and was wanting to go and maybe do like, I don’t know, some great picking in France, or just go travelling or something like that. But my mom said, Well, you can quit school. We know you’re not happy there, but you probably should stay in in education. So I went and did a GMV Q at a college in England. I left home, I was in Northern Ireland, left home, went and did that, and within I did a business gmvq, and within that was a really tiny law module, like six weeks, or something like that, of like an hour a week. And I loved it. And you know, they say it just takes that one teacher to inspire you. Well, the guy that ran that six week module really inspired me. And I thought, right, without a levels, with just gmbq, is there any chance I could ever become a lawyer? Probably not, but I’ll do everything I possibly can to try. So that was before, this is how it’s showing my age. But that was before, you know, kind of the days you could check everyone up on websites and email everyone. So I got the yellow pages, and I wrote to every law firm in a kind of 30 mile radius, saying, Please give me some work experience. And Freeth Cartwright gave me some work experience. And that was my first ever Introduction to Law. And then I managed to find some universities that were taking people without a levels, and, like, kind of giving the equivalent by having the it was, like an advanced Jimmy case. I think it was the equivalent of, like, two and a half a levels, something like that. So I got to Brunel, and then what I thought was, well, if I’m going to be up against people at top universities, and they get a two one, and I get a two one from Brunel, which is a good university, but it’s not, you know, seen for law as one of the top ones what would make a difference? And I thought work experience will make a difference, so I chose a longer degree that had work experience in the middle. So it was a four year degree, but with a year’s work experience at two firms. So did lots of really good like work experience within two different law firms, and they offered me training contracts, so I never had to go through that whole pain of trying to find one, because the ones I did work experience gave me them eventually qualified pins at masons, and I was a real estate, real estate finance lawyer.

Robert Hanna  4:15  

Let’s pick up from there. Then, obviously you’re a lawyer at pinsons, then obviously moved to Director of Legal engineering at Deloitte legal I believe. But what prompted your transition from lawyer to legal engineer

Catherine Bamford  4:26  

when I was about so when I first started, I was loving being a lawyer. Really enjoyed, like the kind of the teamwork, the learning, the meeting, the clients, the events. It was all really good fun. But maybe I chose the wrong area of law. I don’t know. After a few years it was, you were doing the same thing over and over again. So I was doing, like, commercial real estate. So I was doing leases, licences, rent, deposit deeds. And it I just wasn’t satisfied. It wasn’t fulfilling me. I kind of and I was looking at the partners and thinking, I don’t want their life. So. I do this for that was always the goal, qualify and then make partner. But then I was looking at the partners thinking, so basically, I have to keep doing what I’m doing now for about 20 or 30, maybe longer, years, and then I might make partner, if I’m lucky. And I was looking at them and going their life doesn’t look that much fun. So also at that time, the recession then hit and pin since were brilliant in that a lot of law firms made redundancies because the recession really hit hard. What they did was more like the KPMG model, where they put everyone on a 20% pay cut, but everyone went down to four days a week. So they tried to save lots of jobs, but went to that except for a few of us that were put on internal secondments to try and make the law firm more efficient, because clients were asking for more for less. So I was chosen to look at my team and how technology could help make it more efficient. And they had just bought in some document automation software, and I got my hands on that it was meant to be a three month secondment, and 15 years later, here I am. I just never went back. So that was my first experience with legal tech, and I just thought there’s something to this. And back then, you know, 15 odd years ago, you couldn’t google legal tech and find the vast amounts of information you could do previously. There wasn’t even the job title. So we made up the job title legal engineer, because we didn’t know what when I started hiring for the team, because it actually went pretty well, they were like, oh, there’s something to this. We didn’t know what to advertise for, so we called them legal knowledge engineers. So yeah, so that was how it was. It was the recession, and I guess the combination of I was ready to stop fearing anyway, so I approached the firm at the end of the second. I said, Look, you know, I think there’s something to this. Could I do this firm wide?

Robert Hanna  6:47  

I love that. And so let’s move forwards then to July 2014, I believe because you found it then BamLegal, a trusted consultancy specialising in document automation. So can you tell us more about what BamLegal is, please? 

Catherine Bamford  7:03  

Yeah, sure. So it’s a legal technology consultancy for law firms in house teams, and also, more and more these days, like alternative legal service providers. So we work for most of the large alsps, and we help those organisations to choose what technology to buy to solve their particular use cases, saving, just like saving them having to go and see like demos of 200 different tools and then be chased by the sales teams of 200 different vendors. We take them through like the kind of the product procurement process of workshops narrow down to top three, RFPs pilots, implementations, change management, all that kind of thing. So either way, they don’t have resource themselves, or their resource is extremely busy and they want just expertise pinpoint on particular niches. So it started off with dock or so now it’s a bit of everything. Could be like third party contract review this morning, I was asked about using generative AI and deterministic tools to extract the information and then automatically draft the document so without the human even in the middle filling out the questionnaire. So it’s very varied as to what we do, but yeah, it’s it’s legal technology advisors, if you like,

Robert Hanna  8:22  

yeah, and it’s, it’s fabulous. And I’ve been following your journey for for many, many years. And you know, we’ve got lots of mutual friends in and around the world of legal tech, which now very much, is a phrase, whatever you want to call it, um, I guess you touched on it before with the transition. But I’m keen just to get the inspiration. So I big believer in like mission led companies are the ones of the future. But what inspired you to found BamLegal?

Catherine Bamford  8:48  

So there was the there’s the sensible logical answer, which was, I’ve been doing what I was doing for pins at Mason for about four years, and it was going quite well. They won some awards, and other law firms started tapping me on the shoulder and saying, will you come and do what you’ve done there for us? So I was getting quite a lot of job offers, and I thought there’s enough job offers here to set up a consultancy. The story I don’t share often, and maybe because I’ve not made it a reality, and that’s maybe going to come in the next version of BAM was, I was actually in India over Christmas and thinking, What would Why would I do this? What would be the mission? What would be the purpose? And I’ve always had a belief that a lot of what I do, and I’ve learned and the connections I’ve made for doing what I do in the corporate sector could be applied to help with access to justice. So the goal was always learn, connect, grow as much as I possibly could. And so in between, I’ve done a lot of like access to justice events, some pro bono advisory, and I used to actually just volunteer at the art. CJ for support three court to just see what the problems were. Because, yeah, I strongly believe that technology can do an awful lot to to improve access to justice. So that was always the sort of it was to improve the delivery of legal services for all with the kind of mission.

Robert Hanna  10:16  

And I think that’s fantastic. And, you know, we fully support Tech for Good, and particularly access to justice. Obviously, you know, we partner with Cleo on the show. They have a vision and mission to obviously transform the legal experience for all, and we’re all for that. And I think everyone coming together doing this great work, I think we absolutely can reduce that huge access to justice gap that exists. So, you know, thank you for the great work you’re doing. You touched on it before, but I want to go a little bit deeper, just to educate our listeners on this around the services ban legal offers, because it’s legal service transformation, legal document automation, contract standardisation, plays.

Catherine Bamford  10:49  

These are all hard words to say,

Robert Hanna  10:52  

strategic advisory events and workshops. So I guess for again, folks that might be new to dipping their toe into purchasing or thinking about legal tech, just, just break a few of those down and go into a bit more detail. A bit more

Catherine Bamford  11:03  

detail. Yeah. So the kind of the if people, if it’s a law firm, that’s kind of, as you say, dipping their toe in, or just wondering where to start, often, we’ll do like workshop days with the board, or with they can bring in a group of lawyers or particular department to kind of brainstorm use cases, educate about different technology out there. What’s the different technologies that work for different type of tasks? You know, whether we’re talking drafting, negotiating workflow, anything it may be. So that’s the kind of workshop side of things that. And then the full other side of it is, you know, at the moment we have, like, a large global law firm that we’re talking to, who have a huge innovation team, have lots and lots and lots of legal technology products, but have reached a bit of a plateau, and they’d like us to come in and just review the whole thing and maybe assess where things could be changed, because they feel and this is the case with a lot of large organisations at the moment who have invested in legal tech over the years. And resource is that they’ve almost become technology led. So rather than So, what’s happening now is they’ve bought a load of technology, and there’s people going round the law firm, going, can you use this? Can you use this, rather than it being problem use case first, and then the technology to solve it, type thing. So it’s almost like, have the technology and then are scrambling to get the use cases. Yeah.

Robert Hanna  12:39  

Thank you for giving such clear, clear examples for that, and I guess coming to you for some perhaps careers advice. Now you’ve made the transition from lawyer to legal tech entrepreneur. I’m sure there’ll be people listening to this that might be thinking to how you were way back then. But let’s be real. What was the biggest challenge in making that transition from lawyer to legal tech entrepreneur? And I appreciate it was a while back now. So what would you say, perhaps, for people looking forwards in sort of 2025 because Ivan that appreciates different times.

Catherine Bamford  13:07  

So the biggest challenge for me then was how I was going to pay my rent the next month. Yeah, because I was going to lose my salary and I wasn’t going to be able to invoice until 30 days post. So I was extremely lucky that there was a Senior Associate in the law firm I was leaving that I mentioned this to when they said, Oh, well done for you for going to set up your own business. And good for you. And she wasn’t a close friend or anything like that, but she she just said to me, Well, I’ll lend you 500 pounds. Oh, and that was it. And you know, I was like, Well, as soon as I get paid my first invoice. I’ll pay you back. And yeah, so I’ve always believed in kind of like paying that forward. I’ll never forget that gesture of someone believing in you and trusting in you to just help you make that step, making the transformation. The biggest thing to do is kind of make sure you have a plan for those that that roadway, if you like, is it called roadway runway. That’s it runway. So you have, like, your first couple of clients, or your set amount of money that you know will keep you going till you get things rolling, because that’s the scariest time. Is that beginning stage network, like anything from before you even thought you have a business idea, or the kind you know, speaking to some law students on Friday at Anglia Ruskin University and saying to them on LinkedIn, now connect with all of each other, because in 10 years time, that’s your network already. You’re all going to be working in lots of different law firms and legal businesses. So, yeah. So my advice to people now would be network, network, network, build it up so that when you do launch your business, you’ve got lots of people that will be happily supporting you. Get the word out there.

Robert Hanna  14:53  

Oh, you’re talking my language. Lots of things that I you know, people have been listening to show since day.or watch me talk. I. Talk about NSN, never stop networking and work warm. And you gave a great example of networking warm there with your existing cohorts, because they’ll inevitably go off and build their network. So it’s not just that individuals, it’s a network of a network you’ll then acquire. And, yeah, all of that great stuff. So really good advice. All right, let’s go more into automation. Now you know something, you know a thing or two about, but was there a pivotal moment in your career, or just sort of looking up, where you felt that the legal industry really does need better automation.

Catherine Bamford  15:29  

I think from that day one for me, it was so obvious, yeah, because I was doing real estate for like, large investors and pension funds and that kind of thing, so they would own shopping centres office blocks, you know, kind of where they would have multiple tenants within and the law firm would manage that asset for them. So every time we did a lease for that shopping centre, there was a lot of the same information that would go in, and the tenant nearly always would pay a rent deposit, so the lawyers would have to draft one of those as well. Then there’s also these other documents, like notices and stat decks. So every time you did a deal, you had to do about six documents, draft six documents at once, and you were putting the same information manually into those in, like, even just we think the party names, yeah. So for me, as soon as I saw automation and understood how it worked, where you put the information in once, and it prepares first draft of all of the documents ready for you, it just be, you know, it was kind of, I use the example of, like, no one questions accountants using Excel. A lot of what lawyers do is drafting. So why are people even questioning using very simple tools like this to do it for them? So for me, that was, that was kind of obvious with the automation. And then probably the biggest, like the bit where I started to be almost like, recognised as, oh, she’s, she’s quite good at this, or, you know, she knows what she’s doing, is when we started to use it for things that it hadn’t been used for before. So with with pins at Mason’s, famously, and I can talk about this because they’ve talked about it publicly. Was, it was called Project rock, and it was where over Christmas, there was 1000s and 1000 property reports to be doing for a real estate finance deal. So it was after the recession. It was when all the Irish banks were selling off their their debts to some some funds and pin since won millions and millions of pounds worth of work from some magic circle firms, because they automated the process of doing it. And that was something that, through the night, I kind of built with a couple of banking and real estate finance partners, and, yeah, that just kind of like took off and in the firm got the recognition. Because I think it was, like one of the biggest deals, you know, that had been done that year and that kind of thing. And then everyone started going, how could we use it? And that was when suddenly, law firms started realising, when we go to pitches, when we answer RFPs, we want to be saying how we deliver it, using technology to be to be faster, smarter, not even necessarily cheaper, but just if you can do it in a week, and someone else saying it’s going to take them four weeks. You know, that’s of of interest. So that was one of the big ones. I kind of, guess I got some recognition for it, if you like, as to what I could do with you.

Robert Hanna  18:25  

And that’s huge, right? And I think, you know, just thinking back to genuinely, any business, you know, I think whenever you’ve got a product or service, it’s meeting clients where they’re at and understanding the benefit to them. And like you say, it doesn’t, you know, whenever you’re thinking about selling, it’s time, quality or cost. So it’s not all those three variables. So, you know, like you said, it’s not necessarily being the cheapest, actually the quality and the time and the delivery there, you can sell the benefit to them. I love that. Okay, let’s talk about, you know, bit of pessimism. Let’s talk about a bit of, sort of misconceptions when it comes to automation. What are the biggest ones you hear from lawyers around sort of document automation when it comes to just a wrong misconception.

Catherine Bamford  19:03  

So there’s still, to this day, certain lawyers and certain law firms that question why they would want to do things faster when they charge by the hour, which surprises me, but it still happens. So that’s the biggest one that, unfortunately, there’s still firms that think in that way, mainly more in the states now than in Europe, because they still do in some some places in the States still do get to charge what’s on the clock. But then when it comes to automation itself, I think the most common one is my area of work is too bespoke, and you can automate what I do. So of course you could do real estate or employment contracts or NDAs, but what I draft every day is so complicated you couldn’t automate that I’ve never in my 15 years come across a document that couldn’t the drafting of which could not be sped up in. In some way, or improved in some way. Because it’s not always about the speed, as you just said, Rob, it can sometimes be improving the quality of the product, consistency, reducing risk. So I’ve never found an area yet. You know, it could be that you work in, I think I said the other day an example of you could work in space law, but you’re still going to have parties. You’re going to have the logistics of the rocket. You’re going to, you know, whatever it might be, you’re selling moon rocks. There’s still going to be a price. There’s going to be, you know, what happens if there’s a dispute and you’re not happy with it? You’re going to have insurance. You’re going to have really complicated jurisdiction clauses, you know, but you could automate all of those and go, is the jurisdiction Mars or Pluto, you know, whatever it may be, and it will pull in the right clauses and the right definitions. Sorry, bit of an extreme example there. But just when lawyers think their areas bespoke, it’s the nuances that are bespoke, the heavy lifting of the drafting. And it can be as simple as, Do you have a single seller and multiple sellers. No one went to law school to put an S at the end of the word seller and change grammar from has to have. That’s what automation can do for you, and you could then put in your nuanced, bespoke details if you need

Robert Hanna  21:12  

Today’s episode is brought to you by Clio leaders in legal tech and the team behind one of the most exciting AI launches this summer. Clio duo is arriving this summer, and it’s already creating a stir built right into Clio manage. Duo uses AI to help you draft emails, capture time, summarise documents automatically. It’s smart, seamless and designed to save you hours every week. Find out more and see what Clio duo can do for your firm@clio.com. Forward slash UK. Now, back to the show, just to sort of build on the point around, you know, you know, we’re not going to debate the billable hour, but I definitely see a future of sort of value based pricing and tiered pricing. And that future. And Sean Jardine, who’s been on the show, who ran, you know, a very successful law firm many, many moons ago, talks a lot about this and gives a very simple example of, if you have toothache, would you be happy to pay less and wait to get relief of that? Or would you be happy to pay more to get the same quality of service, but faster? And I think if you can kind of educate your clients and put it into that mindset, then it’s not necessarily a race to the bottom when it comes to the advent of including a lot of legal

Catherine Bamford  22:16  

technology. Yeah, not at all. And going back to that example that I said about working with like investors and pension funds each day that goes by. So say it’s real estate, if they have an empty unit that doesn’t have a tenant in, paying rent each day that goes on before they’ve completed that lease is devaluing the value of their portfolio because they don’t have the income of those assets coming in. So the faster you do it, the actual more money you’re making your client. So that’s, you know, or it could be onboarding an employee. It could be getting that, you know, for in house teams, getting that contract in place to allow you to do that service, yeah, the the amount of, I think it was the the IACC or the world contracting commerce. I’m terrible with acronyms, but it was one of them that looked at it something like 9 billion is like, you know, the gap of that, the delay time, if you like, in getting contracts signed. Yeah,

Robert Hanna  23:12  

again, another really good example. And thanks for sharing that. Because I think framing things where people can really get on board with it will hopefully help education, but also adoption as well. Because, you know, we are in this stage of 2025, where, you know, it’s no longer a nice to have. And I know we’re talking off air about that as well. We have mentioned the word AI, yeah, and we’re podcasts, I guess, I guess we’re gonna have to. So how do you and, you know, obviously we can timestamp this, because things are literally changing by the minute, the hour and the day. But how do you see genuinely, AI and automation reshaping the role of lawyers in the coming years? Yeah,

Catherine Bamford  23:49  

I think a lot I do, actually, it’s such an exciting time. And I’ve been on the kind of change journey where I was initially sceptical, then I was a little bit fearful and everything else. But now I’m definitely on the on the excited time and the experimenting time, whereas document automation, as one example, is a way to use technology to do one task. So draft the document with the lawyer, filling in the client details and matter information, what I’m starting to help organisations with now, and particularly, I’m actually working a lot with the vendors now. They’re getting me into experiment with deterministic logic and AI is where can we combine the two? So the other day, I was working with two vendors who are looking at partnering on using generative AI to extract information from the client’s instructions, whether that be an email, a heads of terms both put them both in. Could be a trans the transcription of a teams meeting where you interviewed the client. Whatever it may be, you take those extract information, and then use deterministic logic to draft the dog. Document, then we’re working with clients on third party contract review, so using playbooks to negotiate, so a lot of the tasks that previously were taking lawyers hours of time can now be done in minutes, or even some things are being done automatically. We’ve worked with one organisation recently, where from a teams meeting that happens every month, they’re automatically getting minutes produced board board minutes at the end of it, so no one’s having to go on and do that as a task after using things like transcription and automation. So I think the hours of what lawyers do, if we break it into tasks, of what lawyers do is is being sped up immensely, and the lawyers role of the future will be a lot more about service delivery and Project Management, winning work business development, as opposed to the heavy lifting of manual drafting of a document.

Robert Hanna  26:07  

I agree. I’m going to push you a bit further, AI replacing lawyers. There’s been a lot of commotion regarding that, and you know will continue to be unsure. But what are your thoughts about the statement that AI will replace lawyers? Will it happen? Is it currently happening. Yeah, tell us. I

Catherine Bamford  26:21  

think it will replace the current ways that lawyers deliver tasks. Yep, I don’t think it will reduce the number of lawyers, like some people predict, but I just think that that because the more it seems to be the more technology and the more advances, the more legal things there is to think about, you know. So I’m not sure it will reduce the number of not lawyers, necessarily, but I do think that there will be the role of a lawyer will be very different, and they’ll probably be different job titles, just like 10 years ago, we saw job titles like legal technologist, legal engineer. I think if we were to look at it, a service industry now, a technology business that delivered a service, it’s more what are the job functions within that service business, and then which bits the lawyers do? I think it will look very, very different, but I don’t think the numbers will be reduced,

Robert Hanna  27:17  

yeah, and I think that’s such a great way of looking at it. And, you know, Goldman Sachs, I think, released a port saying, you know, 60% of jobs didn’t exist 80 years ago. So you just think of a simple example. Social media wasn’t around 80 years ago. Social media managers. That’s just a simple example to use. But you know, roles inevitably are going to be reshaped and reform. If we’re not getting more efficient, if we’re not getting faster, if we’re not kind of innovating, then there might be a slight concern. Okay, let’s go back to content. Now, actually, regarding automation, because you put a lot of good content out there, you’ve also produced some good articles, and in one of your articles, you state, which legal documents to automate? So the answer depends on a number of things, such as the main practice areas of the firms, areas operating on fixed feeds or needs to improve margin slash profitability, the experience level of their Automator and the senior level of support. So can you share with us why these factors specifically are important to consider when it comes to document automation from

Catherine Bamford  28:18  

your experience? So yeah. So starting where you have fixed fee work just makes the the implementation, the change management, a lot easier within a law firm. And then you can show you can use, like actual data points of how much you’ve improved profitability to show the rest of the law firm why they should consider using this I think what were some of the other things give me some

Robert Hanna  28:48  

needs to improve their profitability or margin.

Catherine Bamford  28:52  

The reason I talk about that one, as opposed to is because strategy wise, when we say to people, you know, what? What is it you want to do with legal technology, we also always start with, you know, famous Simon, Simon Sinek, always start with, why? And it’s the reason we do that is because sometimes it’s they want to grow a new area and win more clients. So actually, they want to have a really amazing way of delivering that service so they can go and win more clients. But for some areas, it’s like we need to improve profitability, because we know what’s market. We quote market we’re writing off a lot of time. And actually, even though it’s a really, really busy department, profitability is terrible. So we used to always reward lawyers by how much they brought into the business. So that corporate team, oh, well, they made millions last year. But if profitability is tiny, then, you know, sorry, it doesn’t matter if you did a multi million pound deal last year, it still didn’t actually make any money for the firm, you know, compared to employment over there that are doing 1000s of smaller deals, but are really, really profitable because they stream. Mind everything. So that’s why I say to focus on, on that. It’s, yeah, it’s more your your drivers. I think having a senior sponsor within the department is game changing, you know, so having someone that encourages it the use of automation and legal technology in the team, rather than it being the juniors or the knowledge lawyers doing something and then almost having to convince them. Just means that, you know, if they stand up and they go, I’ve seen this, I’ve tried this, I’ve used it, this is something we’re all going to get behind. And if anyone can help, you’ll be, you know, if they name check juniors that have helped then other juniors want to get involved and roll in. So senior sponsor, like with any change management, game changing and the worst projects I’ve worked on, people always like to know the horror stories rather than success stories. The worst projects I’ve worked on is where we’ve had terrible senior sponsors who haven’t really believed in it. They’ve just been put on it by the law firm. They’ve gone, or you go and manage that, and actually, they’ve just got in the way, questioned everything, not really believed in it, and just, yeah, it’s been, it’s been painful,

Robert Hanna  31:14  

yeah, entrepreneurship,

Catherine Bamford  31:16  

battle scars from those kind of ones.

Robert Hanna  31:20  

I mean, we brushed over this. So I want to go into a little bit more detail, because you were one of the very first legal engineers. But again, we’re in an evolving world. Would you mind explaining very simply what a legal engineer is, and what does legal engineering involve?

Catherine Bamford  31:34  

Yeah, sure. So it was a way to try and explain what we were trying to do, and that was looking at looking at the process, the the as is process, if you like, of what the lawyers were doing when they were delivering the service, and by using people process and technology, re engineering it to make it more streamlined. Legal engineering is not just about the innovation and trying brand new stuff. A lot of the books I read and lot of things I like are about, you know, marginal gains and continuous improvement. So, you know, a little bit here, a little bit there. So that was what we It started off because it was Richard Suskind in one of his books, said something like, in the future, there will be this thing there will be a job title called legal knowledge engineers. So it was Orlando connector that I worked with at Pinson suggested that we use that when we were hiring our first legal knowledge engineer, so Pavan Sharma and sarankor, who are now, you know, legal engineer superstars at Chanel and HSBC. And then when I set up, bam, legal, I dropped the knowledge bit because it wasn’t just about the content. It was very much about the resource and the technology and the process as well. So that’s why I dropped it in and and put that in. And then when we set up, well, I not we set up when wavelength was founded, and I became a non executive investor in that. That was the first ever legal engineering firm, if you liked, and they were, there was a lot of talk then about kind of, you know, defining it, and where it came from. But I think at its core, it’s, it’s looking at, it’s, it’s service redesign, if you like, using people process and tech.

Robert Hanna  33:24  

Oh, great way. Love how you position that. And I guess looking looking forwards. Then, by the way, I love you talked about marginal gains. I’m a big fan of James clear. I always reference him in most of my talks. And the impact of small habits and, you know, replacing system, you know, goals, with systems, and 1% compounds makes you 30, 37% more efficient over a year, if you just make those marginal gains. But looking at the future of legal engineering, do you think legal engineering will become a standard career path in law firms, or will it still remain niche expertise?

Catherine Bamford  33:54  

I think it’s actually already disappearing as a job title. I think it’s becoming more as it’s grown, there’s people that look more at each aspect of it. So you’ve now got people that are more legal technologists, and then maybe people that are more about process mapping, and then someone else that, you know, maybe focuses on billing even, because that came into it too, you know. So I actually think legal engineering is a job title probably will go out of favour. And also, because, as I said, we kind of made it up, and we’ve definitely been challenged by lots of engineers going, you’re not doing engineering. Okay, fine, yeah, no, we’re not really, yeah. And I think with tools getting easier and easier and easier to use. I firmly believe that we also need to let the lawyers now do more themselves with the software tools. You couldn’t really do that 10 years ago, because as much as the vendors said, the lawyers could learn how to use the tools. Yeah, it wasn’t that easy, and they didn’t have time, whereas nowadays, because you can use almost, you know, plain natural language to say, I want to build a bot that does this. You know, it’s that easy nowadays to build. And some of the tools, like with document automation, there’s a tool now where it’s it’s truly no code in that. You write all the questions in plain English, and it does the automation, builds the automation for you. So, yeah, I think we’ll, we’ll lose the job, role, legal engineer. The lawyers will start doing themselves. But as I said, the lawyers day and what they do will start to change in itself.

Robert Hanna  35:43  

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I guess sticking with the future, then what’s the future look like for BamLegal, you know, do you have any exciting plans for the rest of this year, the coming years? Tell us,

Catherine Bamford  35:54  

this year seems to be a lot about and I’m really I feel really lucky that I am the person that people approach when they’re wanting to do new things. So this year is a lot about trying to, like, I like to be the first to do something. So, you know, I have ideas, and I go to vendors, and I go, can you do this? And they go, Oh, not quite. But what might that look like? And I was like, Well, I think if you could do this, all these law firms want it and would want to buy it. So this year, I’m having a lot of fun doing experiments and working with people on that long term. I don’t want to grow and scale the business so that it becomes like a outsourced automation factory, that kind of thing. But I think I would like to grow and have more at the moment, I’m the only employee of BamLegal, and I use trusted, trusted contacts that are experts in their specific areas to go and help our clients when our clients come with the use case. So I like, kind of assemble the crack team, if you like. I think I’d just like to grow that a little bit so that we could just service more of of the clients that are coming our way. So, yeah, so if there’s any really, really good legal technologists, project managers, process mappers out there, yeah, feel free to get in touch.

Robert Hanna  37:18  

Absolutely. And I guess before we wrap up, what would be one piece of advice you can offer aspiring lawyers interested in legal tech,

Catherine Bamford  37:26  

just play. So don’t try and go Well, no, don’t let me put you off. Do as many training courses as you like, but try and just play speeding up things that you do in your everyday life. So whenever you’re doing something and you’re thinking, there must be a faster way to do this, it can be, how you turn your lecture notes into exam revision notes, whatever it may be. It could be, how do I work out what’s in my fridge to turn into dinner tonight? Just play and play with tools. Podcasts are great. Listen to podcasts network, but yeah, it’s that curiosity. It’s just not it’s kind of there’s different type of people in the world. There’s some that will just wait to see what happens to them, and there’s some that will go and shape their own future. And it’s that curiosity of what can I do for myself and for me? That’s fun. And I would just say, have fun and play.

Robert Hanna  38:25  

Yeah, definitely the entrepreneur coming out, Catherine. I always say, maybe a bit reckless, I don’t know. I advocate for that. I’m a huge fan of that. And always say, if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me. Look, this has been fantastic. Catherine really enjoyed having you today. If our listeners want to follow you or learn more about your career, or indeed, BamLegal, where can they go to find out more? Feel free to share any websites or any social media handles. We’ll also share them this episode for you too.

Catherine Bamford  38:51  

Thank you. LinkedIn is the main space I hang out. I’m also on Instagram as at Bamlegal.

Robert Hanna  38:58  

There we have it. So thank you so much. Once again, Catherine, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the legally speaking podcast. Speaking podcast sponsored by Clio, wishing you lots of continued success with your entrepreneurial pursuits and indeed, BamLegal but for now, from all of us 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, has a link to join our community there, over and out.