On today’s Legally Speaking Podcast, I’m delighted to be joined by Felix Riley. Felix is a Business/Moonshot Strategist, passionate about helping organisations take a creative approach to problem-solving and growth. He has a wealth of experience as a comedy writer, Global Executive at an NYSE-listed brokerage, and is the author of two best-selling Penguin novels,‘The Set Up’ and ‘The Inside Job’. Felix is committed to equipping teams with practical frameworks for thinking differently and driving meaningful change in their organisations

So why should you be listening in? 

You can hear Rob and Felix discussing:

– Helping Law Firms Stop Playing Small

– A Positive AI Revolution

– AI enabling Quicker and Further Progress

– The Importance of Brainstorming and Reimagining Work

– Functional Tasks Being Done Quckly and Effectively by Machines.

Connect with Felix Riley here – https://uk.linkedin.com/in/felix-riley-brilliant-thinking

Transcript

What’s going be the most powerful thing we can do commercially and for our clients? I started doing my talks because I thought, right, I need to tell a story, take people on a journey where they’re not the problem, as it were, in vertical commerce, that they can see over here is a thing that happens to people and then for them to go, that’s me. And then there’s no conflict. And then they find it easy. It’s an easier way in. I think for Ray, when the hyperbole calms down, when everyone sees it for what it really is, I think it’ll be a brilliant

milestone in the progress of the workplace. think that’s lovely. One of things I love to do is to go into companies and say, look, it’s your friend, not your enemy. It’s only taken away grumble. Actually, if anything, it means that that human talent that you sweated so hard to hire now gets a chance to shine. On today’s Legally Speaking podcast, I’m delighted to be joined by Felix Riley. Felix is a business moonshot strategist.

passionate about helping organizations take a creative approach to problem solving and growth. He has a wealth of experience as a comedy writer, global executive at a New York stock exchange listed brokerage and the author of two bestselling Penguin novels, The Setup and The Inside Job. is committed to equipping teams with practical frameworks, thinking differently and driving meaningful change in their organization. So a very big warm welcome to the show, Felix. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

an absolute pleasure and excited to get into today’s discussion and think differently. But before we do that, we have a couple of icebreaker questions. What is your favorite beverage and what is your preferred choice of footwear on a typical workday? Okay. ⁓ The whiskey. I can’t drink a lot of it. It’s my, it’s also my demon drink. It’s a funny one. There’s been a few episodes in my life when I was younger and it was crazy and all these things. It made me think, all right, never go too far with this. But actually I think, I think it’s funny. I’ve been talking to my friends recently.

I’ll go around and I’ll do you want a glass of wine? I’ll say, not really, because it doesn’t, it’s not nice. It’s not a nice, unless you’re spending so much money, it’s not typically a nice thing to drink actually. So you just drink it to get a bit drunk. ⁓ And so I’ve actually found myself not drinking much. And now I just want every glass of vodka or whiskey or wine, to matter, be nice. So I’ve got very fussy in me old age. ⁓ so whiskey, I’ve tried Norwegian whiskey recently.

My work associate is in Norway and when I go to see her, I drink Norwegian whiskey and it is unbelievable. Very expensive as is most things in Norway, but it’s very, very nice. ⁓ Preferred workwear on a work day. slippers all day. yeah. It’s not even a debate slippers. And then I know slippers. And then if I’m going out, I’ve got these one pair of trainers that are just my, they’re slip ons.

I just don’t, I don’t want to have laces ever again in my life. I just, you know, it’s, know you have to formal wear and all that, but it’s so nice to slip them on. go out. mean, people damn crocs. I think you have to slip on, know, they’ve slippery. That’s the problem, but they are slip on. so yes, there you go. So whiskey in my slippers. What a wonderful life. Convenient and cozy. And with that, we’ll move swiftly on to talk more about you. So to begin with Felix, would you mind telling us a bit about your background and career journey? I grew up on a charming council estate in Essex, really one of the best.

And they used to check you for knives on the way in. And if you didn’t have one, they’d give you one to make it a fair fight. That’s what place. I went to Edinburgh University, I studied mental philosophy. And I say that because I use my philosophy education every day. I love it. I love it. It’s a really interesting ⁓ education. And actually fun enough, we may get onto it later when we’re talking about AI, about the fact that humanities are now back in focus. They are now in the ascendance.

Anyway, so I did that and I went straight from there to the BBC to write comedy and I had a great time doing that and I, you know, and I worked for lots of shows. was Zoe Ball’s breakfast show writer for a year, met loads of celebrities and I don’t get excited about celebrities. So unfortunately that was wasted on me, but they were very nice for the most part. A lot of them quite troubled. And then I went from there, after a number of years of doing this, my then wife sat me down and said, you’ve had a few laughs. Sadly, none of them professional. Why don’t you get a job that pays money? So I went to the city.

And I went to the city and I found that considerably easier than writing jokes. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve no offense to anyone who’s in the city, but honestly, we’re going to write a joke if you think that’s hyperbole. And then I left there to start my own company and I sold that back to a city institution. And I found myself sitting on the global executive of a New York Stock Exchange listed company. And that was peak imposter syndrome at the time. I’ve had other imposter syndrome since then. I don’t trust people who haven’t got imposter syndrome in a funny sort of way. I think we all should have a bit of

And then from there, went to do the next, I left there to do the next natural thing, was copper mining in Zambia. And that was wonderful and fun. And I negotiated with President Bandra a few times and he was such a nice guy, so intelligent, so humane, so dedicated to his people. And no one was more surprised than me than when he was banged up for embezzlement a few years later, because that’s my character judgment in a spoonful. And then I went from there, and then I a couple of thrillers for Penguin, because I wanted to explain the credit crunch.

And I’ve got lots of very smart friends and they said, we don’t understand the credit crunch. What happened? You know, cause it was so oblique and so obscure, you So I wrote two credits with the sole intention really of explaining the credit crunch in the most entertaining way possible. So, the big short gave me a run for my money. I will tell you that just to be clear. That’s exactly what it came to my mind. a very good writer. Yes. I’ll give him that. ⁓ and, then what, and then the chap I knew he said, look, my, my IT company is in trouble and would you turn it around? So I turned it around.

And as I was handing back, they said, will you stay on as an advisor? And that was about, gosh, 14 years, 13 years ago. And that’s how I became a business strategist. But then laterally, I’ve reframed myself as a moonshot strategist. And it’s very deliberate to, I want people to realize, look, you if you work with me, we’re going big. We’re going to really try and do something big here because incrementalism kind of breaks my heart, to be honest. Because you only live once, you know, and all we did, right? And I don’t know what people are being so cautious for. But what happened was, it’s really interesting is that

I was working with this IT company for a long time and then lots of other companies would just start dropping into my, you know, word of mouth and stuff, dropping into my lap. And I found a universal problem at companies because they were all run by smart people, smart men and women, ⁓ really, you know, ambitious, hardworking, all of them to some degree, some very much so thinking small, not thinking they were thinking small, but thinking small. mean, don’t get me wrong, somebody starts a new company, a startup thinking big.

big dreams, big dreams, big goals, you know, but life batters us down. And what happens is people get more and more cautious. And I, and what I found was first of I didn’t know what was going on. Why think it’s small? Why, why can you, why are you being so risk averse? And then I realized, then I actually went off and studied it and thought, oh, it’s cognitive biases. Oh, you’re, oh, we’re all gripped by cognitive biases, loss aversion, risk of it, sunk cost fallacy, group think, all these things, they affect us all. In fact, interestingly, the more intelligent

we are the more likely we are to suffer from. So you’re very safe, but you’re listening. I mean it in a loving way. Exactly. Yeah. No, I’ll take that all day. So ironically, your listeners are more prone than the average person, you know, and that’s really important. that’s why I do so much work with law firms, because they’re really lovely about having a wake up one day going, oh, something’s wrong here. Come in, come in, have a chat. And so I started to say to people, I used to call our own meetings and saying, look, that’s risk aversion. What’s happening here is this.

what I found was because they’re human, they would push back and go, it’s almost like you said you’re wrong. And if you tell someone they’re wrong, they just dig their heels in. And so I ⁓ realized I can’t communicate this this way, can I? And that’s why I started doing my talks. Cause I thought, right, I need to tell a story and take people on a journey where they’re not the problem, as it were, in vertical cameras, that they can see over here, look, this is a thing that happens to people. And then for them to go, ⁓ that’s me. And then there’s no conflict.

And then they find it easy. It’s an easier way in. So I started giving my talk, The Flea Jar, which is my obsession. And it just seemed to resonate. And I have had such a privilege of working with so many law firms where the managing partners, especially, have seen me and just said, come give that talk. the crux of the talk is we have limiting beliefs, but there’s a way through it. There’s a system that gets us out of it. And so my privilege is to go into law firms, especially, and to help them stop playing small.

And it’s all because of this crazy journey of mine. And it’s brilliant, hence brilliant thinking as well. And, you know, I remember once someone said to me when I was starting business, you know, if your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough. You know, you’ve got to really go for it and shoot for the stars to, you know, only live once. And I fully, believe that. And, you know, almost to the extent that most people in normal world think you’re insane. Yeah. Yeah. I you know, then you probably do it right. Yeah. And so in my journey, I look back on that and think of some of the things that I’ve done, even this podcast, when, know, it was

you know, quite risque back in the time to do something like this. ⁓ you know, I’m, grateful that I have, and I pushed out of that comfort zone. And I got on with it. You touched on AI, just want to kind of get into that because you’ve been at the forefront of translating AI challenges into practical thinking tools. what first convinced you that lawyers needed to implement AI in their practice? Well, it’s very interesting. I, when I did my degree, and as I say, I use it every day, ⁓

My favorite subject was personal identity and consciousness. And you can’t have that conversation without getting into AI. Not really, because you get into what is it, know, and then you start saying, can machines ever be conscious? And lot of people say, no, never. Some people say maybe one day, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And so it was always on my mind. So my entire life I’ve tracked AI. And to quote Jan Lacoon, the amazing former head of Meta’s AI program, he said,

You know, every 10 years someone announces we’ve discovered AI and proper AI and proper AGI, you know, and he says, they just haven’t, you know, and I’ve tracked it for like, you know, gosh, you know, almost 40 years and watch people claim AI has come along. And this is a watershed moment really because of the processing power. afraid I don’t get, I’m afraid I don’t get, and then by the way, I think this is a good thing. I, you know, we haven’t got AGI. What we have got is incredibly useful tools.

incredibly powerful grunt load work, know, load lifters. Brilliant. mean, just and that’s, you know, and I think the I think the AI industry, not the applications, but the foundation AI models have had a catastrophically bad approach to PR, because they’re running around saying, oh, there’ll be no jobs in the future. Well, what did that do to the mortal man, know, the man woman and the man on the street going, well, so my future is over, is it? Yeah, I think they’ve been catastrophically bad.

Because the applications are really good. The applications, I know this is sponsored by Clio and there are so many good applications out there which are taking away the heavy lifting. And the comparison I like to use is Excel. When Excel came along, people don’t remember, I do. When Excel came along, people said, well, that’s the end of accountants. Well, that’s that, who needs them? I’ve got this spreadsheet thing and it was amazing. Before Excel, you had two people in an accountancy office, one saying the number, the other one ticking off.

Staggered now it’s like that’s almost hard to imagine that sounds Dickensian, you know And but and then it came along and it was the end of accountancy And as you know, we’ve never seen an accountant since that was the end of accounting. No, there was a boom There was a boom because it allowed them to it was it the heavy lifting was helped with and they could suddenly go Well, I can start using my brains my intelligence. So all the functional work is done. Brilliant Now I just now I can be much more creative much more. Yeah much more helpful to my clients. It’s a brilliant moment

And that’s how I feel about AI. think with AI, the hyperbole calms down, when everyone sees it for what it really is, I think it’d be a brilliant milestone in the progress of the workplace. I think that’s lovely. And so one of things I love to do is to go into companies and say, look, it’s your friend, not your enemy. It’s only taken away grunt work, and that’s the thing. It’s not taking away anything interesting. And actually, if anything,

It means that that human talent that you sweated so hard to hire now gets a chance to shine. Now get it because that’s going to differentiate you because as I say to Clark, there’s an unintended consequence with AI, which I think is kind of, it’s kind of scary, but then you realize, no, it’s very exciting. Is that it’s actually, it’s raised the floor for everybody. It’s raised the floor. So you look around and go, we’ve got much better marketing.

people down the road, much better comms. we do much better document drafting and much better research. go, do you? Do you? Because they’ve literally got an AI system and they’re on it, you know. And on the one hand, that’s obviously a jolt to major law firms, or any law firm, going, crikey, well, I’ve my game. And I go, it’s all an opportunity. Because all the work’s done. Now your people can shine. Now what would distinguish you from the competition will be how good your people are. And I think it’s, I would feel more secure actually.

as a lawyer. Now, once the hyperbole calms down, I think they’re going to realize, we’re superstars. We are, because we’re not, I’m not, you know, drudging away in a bloody dark office, grinding out documents and everything. And also, I’m happy to say my third-year associates aren’t either. You know, we’re doing much more interesting work. And we’re really, it frees up the brain to think of really interesting solutions. And really, ⁓ you know, now I’ve got time to help navigate my clients with the ambiguity of the law, instead of going, right, what have I got off the shelf? What can we do? What have we done before? Right, let’s do that, you know.

So I think it’s all exciting. And that’s the way to look at it, isn’t it? It’s looking forwards, opportunity, opportunity. Of course, yes, there are certain concerns and ethical considerations, et cetera, et cetera. But actually, with this new wave of technology, there’s so much excitement out there.

I was just thinking back to my late grandfather who ran his own law firm. used to sit me down on Sundays and talk about, know, this is in 1950s, how they take phone calls. think someone would unplug something. There wasn’t a dial line and they would put someone through. And then you think about, know, then landlines, then mobiles, everything just evolves. It gets quicker, faster, more opportunities, more calls, know, more business, all of that good stuff. And on that, your keynote lawyer versus the machine, you touch on some parts there, but just want to explore it a little bit more because it explores how, know, artificial intelligence is basically reshaping.

legal profession as we probably, you my late grandfather wouldn’t probably recognize it and, know, in five, 10 years moving forward. So why do you believe the best lawyers will not compete with AI, but will lead it? Because AI is very limited. You know, what it does, it does terrifically as a data retrieval. It’s amazing. Is it great that I can, you know, put a few bullet points in and have a long email written? Yeah. You know, although I think emails are getting shorter. I don’t know. Who knows? ⁓ But the, ⁓ but I love all that. The fact it can take grunt work off me. I love.

But it means all I want to do is to be me as much as possible. You know, when I sit down and I think, of course, all these LinkedIn messages, got to post on LinkedIn, got to all these things. If someone said, is that someone that will automate all of that? you go, yeah, because that’s not me. That’s the grunt work. I want to be with humans. All I want to be is with humans. You know, I want to give talks. I want to be on podcasts. I want to be meeting people in offices. I don’t want to do the grunt work. And, but the thing as well is, is, you know, when I’m with someone, if I’m with it, you know, I’ve interacted with lawyers all my life.

I’ve never been struck by the quality of their legal drafting, you know, the opposing side, I’m not, you know, and I’m not struck by the quality of their comms or their market. I’m in the room with, you know, Jane Watson or whoever it is. And she’s blowing my mind with how, you know, her clarity, her ability to make me feel safe, her ability to give me alternatives, but then also to advise, I’d go that way, you know, that’s what I want. I want the human. I don’t want any of the automated stuff. And so

have that taken away so that Jane can walk out from her desk and say, right, got plenty of time, what do want to talk about? Let’s get into this. It’s just gold. so, but the thing is there’s a lovely analogy, well, not analogy, there’s a lovely parallel where Steve Jobs, late great Steve Jobs, we won’t talk about his character, but as an achievement, as a man of achievement, he gave great talk once where he said, look, there was a big bit of research done about what was the most, ⁓

Energy and economical animal in the world. Who did the most with the least? And they ranked all the animals from birds all the way down to lions and whales and everything. We were in there. And what they found was that the most efficient traveler was the condor. Incredibly efficient, kilojoules or whatever the measure is. Humans were about a third of the way down. Hordes of animals out of us.

And everyone said, well, that’s it. We’re not the most efficient animal. were not very efficient. But then someone very clever in the research team said, what have you got human on the bicycle? And we were streets ahead. We were suddenly number one. And to me, AI is that bicycle. It’s that ability to say, you know, we’re riding it so we can get so much further, so much quicker. And I find that thrillingly exciting. And I think I lead perfectly to where I want to go next because it’s context and positioning.

because I want to talk about some AI and concerns, know, sticking with that school of thought, you your perspective, what concerns you most about the way AI is actually being marketed currently to law firms? Well, I think they’re over promising. I mean, there was a really interesting, in the last couple of weeks, there’s been a big bit of research ⁓ released about coding, software coding. So can I just take a small foray into that? Please do. So one of my best muckers is an investor in Harvey. So I know, you know, I’m not…

on the scenes and they’re so right, he needs to on the scenes. But if he’s listening, he hasn’t told me a word, but I know a lot about it. but, I, know, and their arc is the same arc as everybody else. But what, what has happened is these, AI needs to make money and it needs to make it urgently. Because as we know, you know, there’s a lot of talk of open AI running out of money. It doesn’t mean it will, but there’s a lot of talk. just is. There’s lots of podcasts and interviews where people are saying it’s going to run out of because the maths doesn’t add up.

And it doesn’t add up. And it doesn’t add up for lot of them. Google’s got the money, Apple’s got the money, but a lot of them haven’t got the money. And so what they’re doing is they are desperate to find ways to monetize their engines, their foundational models. Now, the most obvious way was coding, software coding, because software coding is code-based and law-based, rule-based, thanks very much, made for AI. Brilliant. AI goes out there and is smashing it. Over half of all code written today is AI. And they are very confident that within

two years ish, 90 % of all code will be written by AI. Devastating for coders, revolution for that industry. The coders hopefully will find other homes, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, park that. Then AI, again, right, well, what else is code-based? What else is rule-based that we can go after? Well, that’s the law. That’s the law. And the thing is, the law is, is it what, two and a half trillion global business? Well, they want that.

that they just want a slice of it and they are living the dream. So that’s why they’re like, we can nail this. can find a framework where we can actually control the thinking and have sensible outcomes with the law. Great. That’s exciting. And if that was all it was, they would get better and better. And I think the law would very much be in their sights. The two things, well, at least two things, but there’s many, things against it. But one thing is that AI can’t think. AI can’t think.

I don’t like the term AI. don’t actually use it. When I’m my talk, the term AI gets dumped very quickly. It’s machine learning. It’s machine learning. And I say that because Jan LeCun, the former head of Metta up until about a months ago, he’s the first to say it’s mimicking intelligence. It’s mimicking smartness. It’s not smart. It doesn’t know a thing. It doesn’t know what a strawberry is. It doesn’t know what the color red is. You you do with that t-shirt, but that’s between you and your conscience. no, you know what mean? It doesn’t know anything. It doesn’t know anything.

And lawyers do, and so they have an edge. But also, and this is really, really important, there has been, I think, a reckless, not by all of them, but actually, I think there’s, for the most part, been a reckless race to be the most advanced ⁓ AI foundational model. And we know they have thrown caution to the wind. There’s been some terrible episodes, obviously, you know, the GROC, ⁓ you know, the manipulation of images and all these sorts of things, and they’ve been investigated for that sort of stuff. There has been.

a terrible rush and standards gone out the window. But one thing that has happened, and this is now evidence based, is that a lot of the code, in fact, up to 45 % of code, they’re finding written by AI is insecure, is allowing people to hack it quite easily. And they’re realizing, hang on a second, unless humans are all over this, it’s making mistakes left, right and center.

And they really are having a wake up, but there’s two watershed reports coming out in the last few weeks. And they were one from Stanford, one, I can’t remember the other one, but actually I posted about it on LinkedIn. And it really undermines the idea that AI has safely taken coding and run with it. And what people are realizing now, they haven’t got back in and fix it, know, big time. And actually, a lot of people who, know, smart people in the industry are saying, it’s gonna take us more to fix it than we ever saved using AI to do coding.

Now, there’s lots of ways to unpack that for law, but let me just go for one obvious one. If you do a massive &A case and you use AI to crunch all the documents and crunch all the concerns and write what are the points we need to raise with the other parties, yada, yada, yada. And three years, five years down the road, someone just says, I’m just gonna look at those documentation. I’m just gonna take another look. Did we miss anything? yeah, we did. Well, that’s a lawsuit. That’s a lot of liability.

Now, to be fair, I know that apps like Harvey are trying very, very hard to go way beyond the recklessness of some of the more rushed coding models, but that’s a liability. And as a managing partner of a firm, do I really want to sign off on AI’s work too glibly? By the way, this is good thing. It means that AI can do the heavy lifting, the grunt work, but humans should still be involved.

They should still say, look, let’s not just sign it off lazily. Let’s not just go, oh, we’ve done it right. What would I do with a third year associate? I’d check the work. I’d check and I’d go through this. I’d have measures. And I think so, so I’m not, this is not a council of doom. This is a council of caution that we should be, that these amazing tools, it’s very easy to over-depend on them because of the hype, because the silly Sam Altman-esque comments that are out there. But actually if you take it in a measured way and go, well, this is a really good part of the workflow.

This is fantastic. Then happy bloody days. then we’re on to then we’re on to ⁓ a new age. Hopefully as going back to my rituals and human focus law, which is why we get into it. Today’s Legally Speaking podcast episode is proudly sponsored by Clio. If your legal management software feels more frustrating than helpful, you’re not alone. Many solicitors across the UK delay switching because moving client and case data sounds like a headache. Clio makes it simple.

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dot com forward slash UK to learn more and discover why so many UK solicitors choose Clio. Now back to the show. We’re just all craving that H2H human to human connection. Even more so in this AI revolution. Again, to maybe law firm buyers out there that are exploring legal tech or just technology. Generally you’ve stated law firms need to flip the script when dealing with

tech providers. So how should law firms define their needs and challenges to ensure that tech providers help them in delivering real solutions? Well, think the Nvidia, the world’s biggest chip maker, well, I don’t if it’s the biggest, most successful chip maker. They have this wonderful approach that is one of my brainstorming techniques that I bang on about, is called blank page, the blank page approach. And what they do is they have the best chips in the world. We know this. China wants them. Everybody wants them.

The UAE bought them for 500 million dollars off of Donald Trump. Wonderful thing. so they want them. What Nvidia does when it goes to make the next generation, Jensen gets everyone in the room and they don’t come in with any schematics of the existing best computer chip. Everyone has blank paper. He goes, right, starting from scratch, if we’re starting today, what would we do? And everybody…

uses their best knowledge, their latest wisdom to create a new chip. Because he knows if he takes the existing schematic and says, right, what can we fix here? You’ll fix that and you’ll fix that and you’ll fix that. And you’ll never see a really revolutionary solution because you’re just bending this and improving that. And so it’s a blank page approach to brainstorming. And there’s a reason they are the most advanced computer chips in the world, you know, because they’re not confined by cognitive biases, my obsession.

They’re confined by limited beliefs from before. They’re not anchored in the old design. And I would say to law firms, you need a blank page. You need a blank page where you say, wait, because, and it’s not scary because it’s just a piece of paper in there. You don’t have to do it. but, but because I have a lot of brainstorms where people say literally a man will clutch his pearls and just say, but we can’t do that. you go, we’re just talking about it. It’s just, should we have the conversation? But I, and so I say, I would say to people, right, you know, you have a workflow, have a structure, the shape to your company.

AI to really benefit from AI, I would be prepared to throw all the pieces up in the air and say, let’s have that offsite one, two, three day offsite where we go, if we were starting from scratch with the talent we’ve got, not the structure, not the flow, the talent, how would we do this? And this is what AI can do. And we like this. We like the halfies of this world. They’re very, they’re the safest and they, know, these are the bits we can feel assured work, crucial word. What would we do?

And you have to do that. That’s why I really urge people to do is to go just reimagine it from the ground up. if in, actually, you know, you haven’t committed, you’ve just had to do it. But I think you’ll be, people will be shocked and excited by how they would structure a company today. And then they’re thinking like entrepreneurs and startups, you know, that edge. Yeah. It’s so good, isn’t it? It’s really getting them to think creatively and completely.

re-imagine this, you know, similar link, you know, it goes back to the old Henry Ford quote, doesn’t it? If I’d asked my assistant customers what they wanted, you know, they said faster horses, which of course it was the, you know, the automobile that was the breakthrough technology. So they probably went back and sat at that piece of paper and thought, right, let’s move away from four legs. Let’s think of something that can maybe rotate and move faster and get people from A to B. And it’s similar in, you know, other industries. So yeah, thanks for sharing that. You have talked very openly about opportunities for AI. And I see one of the biggest issues is actually implementation.

because AI can eliminate, as you’ve said, grunt work, but how does it empower lawyers to actually shift from the repetitive tasks that we kind of know it can do to actually that more meaningful client engagement and strategic work that you’ve been alluding to? Well, mean, effortlessly, I believe it’s And it could do, it could do. again, I think we should be looking at software coding as a warning to a lot of people who rushed out and implemented too quickly.

and implemented too glibly ⁓ and too overconfidently. I think the, actually back to your point about, okay, if you were going to, you know, implement AI, how would you, how would you be talking to the partners and how would you be talking to the AI companies about this? I think the onboarding is everything. It’s everything because what they’re finding at software companies now is that they sacked a load of staff, got a bunch of AI. They’re now hiring the staff back, getting rid of the AI because

They didn’t understand it completely, but they believed the promises and said, great, we’re gonna be fine. And they got scared, ⁓ risk aversion, ⁓ lovely cognitive bias. They got scared of the composition out competing. So they rushed headlong. And I think lawyers are obviously a more measured beast anyway, which is a lovely thing. And they should, I think, they should put the onus on the AI companies to say, show us how this implements effortlessly. What a pilot program. I’m not going all out.

I want to, you know, I would pick a department, I pick a team or some willing punters within the law firm. And I would want to see, and I would actually, there’s no rush, there’s no panic. It’s gonna be okay. And I would actually have, I personally, if there was the luxury of scale to be able to test it out, I would test it in one area. One you felt was maybe M &A, which of course was how Harvey started to take that as an example. And then I would sort of say, right, that’s the pilot. And then really have a very, very serious, all hands on deck discussion.

of what happened, feedback, what was good, what was bad, a proper 360 on it, and then only implement it when everyone is super happy that they genuinely know, no leaps of faith. I think that’s where software coding has been bitten in the backside. They took a lot of leaps of faith. They were greedy and scared at the same time, both bad emotions, you know? And I think lawyers are more measured. And I think, and I would, yeah, and I would absolutely, I would do it on stages where

When they did it, they knew that what they were going to get. And I really mean that they knew what they were going to get because they knew what people had gone through. They knew implementation. I am working with so many law firms who go, yeah, we’re using some stuff and some people like it, some don’t. And, know, and we’re thinking of making it mandatory. don’t know, you know, agonizing because it is hard. It’s hard. But I think the, I think I wouldn’t want to fumble my way towards it. I would want one team and I would want to then say, right, lovely microcosm.

let’s have the 360 of such confidence we could roll the whole thing out, you know, ⁓ but, but equally, you know, see what’s interesting is LLMs, because it’s machine learning, not AI, but nevermind. ⁓ LLMs, again to quote Jan Lacoon, who’s got a dog in the fight, you know, he, you know, he, you know, he’s, he’s, he was meant to get LLMs to AGI and he couldn’t do it. He said, you can’t be done. You know, he said they’re kind of peaked. And in fact, they’re all admitting this. Sam Altman, everyone is admitting LLMs have kind of peaked and maybe they’ve permanently peaked. We don’t know.

which doesn’t take away from them, think they’re remarkable, you know. But what we’re going to see now for Definite is we’re going to see, I reckon in the next three years-ish is going to be the application stage, where the applications are going to get better and better. And there’s a funny thing, I’m old enough to remember the ZX Spectrum now, I’m sure I’m my age here. And I remember Clive Sinclair, that very eccentric fellow, who was more famous with going to Stringfellas than he was to building a revolutionary computer.

But Clive Sinclair being interviewed, I think it was in the 90s, and someone said to him, did you know the games that were coming on the spectrum? Do you realize? You would revolutionize, you know, with that tiny memory ⁓ computer, how people played games and that. And Clive Sinclair said, I thought they would be playing Tic-Tac-Toe. I never thought in a million years they would be playing the games that I’m watching on my own machine. And AI, everyone’s off drinking the Kool-Aid and saying it’ll cure cancer and all these silly things.

which I hope it does, but come on. But what is going to happen now, I guarantee it, is Karma eyes, smart eyes will look at the foundational models and go, oh, I know how to do a really good application here. Oh, I really know. Now I can see they’ve all got to an amazing level. I actually, don’t just want OpenAI, I don’t just want Anthropic. I’m gonna link them up and all that. And I think we’re gonna see, I honestly, I happily predict this, we’re gonna see a real advancement in the application because the rules will get better.

the, you know, the, you know, there’s, there’s time to learn from mistakes, but also other new applications go, ⁓ that’s what I waiting for. I can now plug that into mine. And I think we’re going to see a real acceleration. actually no thanks to the AI companies per se, which I didn’t, I didn’t mean that in a bad way. I think the application startups will do some amazing things. Yeah. And I think it’s very exciting and let’s stick with the future then, cause you know, law firms are going to continuously get inundated with AI sales pitches.

minutes, every day, because people want a slice of this legal tech market. said there’s huge two and a half trillion, whatever it might be market there, know, tech companies are waking up to the opportunity. So what criteria should leaders of these firms be setting to cut through the loud noise? think I would be telling the firms, would want to almost isolated conversations in a perfect world where, okay, before you tell me what your product does,

No, in fact, no, let’s be careful cognitive biases. Tell me what your product does. Fine. Okay. Listen to it and be very calm about it and very clear about it. And obviously go and speak to anybody who’s implemented it. I would absolutely want to hear other customers’ experiences if they would be willing to because they’re all in competition. But then I would say, I would want another conversation, which is, this is what we want. This is what we want. And go out and find the company that does that. Rather than, because the problem is, you know, to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

getting a lot of people just saying, yeah, just use us crunch shove, that’s the fit, you know, as opposed to saying, no, we’ve done the away days, we know how, you know, automated work could fit into our flow. And this is what we want you to do. And if you can’t do that, I’ll try another company. And I think it’s, know, so, but I do think it’s a moment in time when we don’t know what we don’t know. And if you’re

So I don’t want to sort of preach as being clever, clever and sort of say, this is what we want. And we went ahead with it without consulting anyone because someone might come along and say, we do this and go, ⁓ we didn’t even imagine that was possible. That’s amazing. So I would actually, if I was, there’s no question for me, if I had an AI firm with the capacity, a law firm, sorry, with the capacity, I would be having a task force that said, go out and tell us what’s out there so that lawyers understood it. I’m not interested in the salespeople telling me, you know,

what they know per se. I’d want a task force inside the company that could then report back and present very intelligently through their eyes, not with the salespeople. Nothing against salespeople, they’re just doing the job, but they’ve got way too much of a dog in the fight, you know. And then I think you’d have a clear-eyed conversation. And I don’t think it’s too tricky to get into that, to achieve that, but you’re gonna see churn, you’re gonna see…

you know, do you really want to adopt some technology that goes bust in six months? Do you, you know, you’ve got some things like that going on. So there isn’t a panic, there isn’t a rush because I don’t think people are going to see the benefits too quickly. think, and unfortunately, again, this is where people, if you, the more you know, the more you can talk to your clients as well, because I ⁓ was talking to a leading barrister recently, head of chambers. And he said that in a case where typically it’d be him and three juniors.

The client said, Oh, can we just have one junior use AI for the rest? And the master was, it’s not how it works. They said, well, no, that’s what we’re to pay for, you know, and found himself in a very odd conversation where what, know, and so, because they half understand and actually the more we know, the more, the more we can say, absolutely that isn’t how it works because, you know, and so good luck, you know, go somewhere else and find that company that does that. Uh, the chambers. So yeah, a task force, I would have a task force because it’s.

It’s too big, it’s too exciting, but it’s too risky, I think, to go in half-cocked. so. I think we don’t know what we don’t know. And I would make it my job to know, know in the truest sense of the word, how we move forward. Yeah. Great advice. And, you know, really, really enjoying the discussion generally and your views on AI, law, the future. Let’s talk about empowering the everyday lawyer now. Yeah. You what would be your top three tips for legal professionals to feel empowered, to ask the right

questions to advocate for their needs and still capture the benefits of technology? I would write down on a piece of paper what I like doing. I really would. And I’d write down what I don’t like doing. And I would say, can AI do that? Yeah. And then I would, and I would, once that was addressed, and it probably could be because they’re very smart lawyers and they will, they’re not going to say speaking to clients is something I don’t want to do because they’ll realize that’s the human thing.

And what they’ll do is they’ll list lots of grunt work. Good, done. And I think that would be a great way to, again, in this AI task force, if everyone wrote that, you’d get so much overlap. Everyone would say, yeah, that’s our wish list, done. But then I would, but again, you see, I would not just as lawyers, but as a law firm, I’d be sitting back and saying, you know, now that the grunt work’s gone, you know, not gone, now the grunt work’s been assisted, what’s going to be the most powerful thing we can do?

commercially and for our clients and what have you and have a proper brainstorm where they reimagine what they do because at the moment they’re anchored in the mindsets they have to be because we’re humans and this is how we function. They’re anchored in the mindset of I get clients, I do all this work and then we get to the solution and there’ll be some negotiations and so on. Well now hopefully they’re thinking it’s the human stuff I’m doing and I don’t have to do it which means you know now with more time and more energy what would I really do?

Cause I’m, know, I can now say to him, look, for the same money, can spend a lot more time with you. I can do a lot more, you know, I’ve had, you know, I’ve had the experience. I once treated myself to a very good lawyer for property, for a property deal. And it was stunning. It was stunning. It was, mean, I phoned him, he picked up the phone and I said, can you, can we find out this? goes, yeah, fine. We’ll back to you. None of this solicitor stuff where they get back to a week later. Once you’ve chased them five times, it was, wow. I mean, once you’ve had the luxury and the privilege of having.

a really high powered lawyer to do some of the work for you. It’s really hard to go back. It’s first class back to economy territory. And so I would want them to go down the road of being a human lawyer. The reason they became a law in the first place. You get a few bookish types who actually just love the technical stuff. Good, stay there. Stay there because they’re going to need people to curate all this stuff. But I would be reimagining. I would be saying, I think the really smart law firms

are going to say, we have, know, the functional stuff is now not that valuable. You know, the valuable stuff is us being personable, honestly, us being able to sell into the clients. There’s no better way to say it. But then also for be able to take them on the journey safely from where they are to where they want to be. And I would be putting so much energy into that. And I would be that’s why I’d be upscaling my teams. I would be saying honest hand on heart. I’d be saying, right, we need to teach people to be more personable because it’s going to be much more human from now on.

and just having a reputation for being amazing at this type of law won’t necessarily be enough, you know. And then also, you know, how to close deals and because every conversation is an opportunity to close deal, afraid, you know, let’s be honest, and however nuanced and subtle and sometimes just making people feel safe is enough, you know. And then also really, really sit back and say, what’s the journey now? You know, before my brain would have been fizzing with all the work I had to do, actually.

Can we elevate their experience, the client’s experience? Because now, you know, one thing I would do in a heartbeat is, you know, lawyers, and I get this a lot from lawyers and bless them, you know, for this, is they get called in the crisis. You know, my husband’s leaving me, my partner’s run off with the cash in the company, whatever, we’re doing a takeover, whatever. Events force that someone’s hand in their phone to the lawyer. I think lawyers should be one to five steps ahead. I think they should be going to their clients and saying, look, what’s coming up?

the next three to five years, because we could probably save you a lot of money, because help you not make bum steers, help you make decisions that you wouldn’t have ever thought because we weren’t involved in the conversation. And I would be looking to be partners. I would be looking to be, on, don’t just call us in a crisis. We’re not 999. mean, we always will be there for you, but you’re not scratching the surface. mean, we know that in an ideal world, we’d all go see the doctor, quarterly, and to be very honest about our lifestyle.

And they would say, right, cut back the wine. want to do it. I want 10,000 more steps out of your day. And you know, you’d live longer. Well, why wouldn’t you want to do that with your lawyer? You know, if you could go and have that chat with your lawyer, but that’s not how it operates at the moment. But that’s what I would do. it’s being proactive, isn’t it? And I love that you’re focusing in on being client centered and it’s me putting my legal recruiting hat on. Yes, we can be transactional and just service the law firms when they have a need. But actually most of the clients say to us, look,

Tell us what’s out there. Where are the trends? Like what are the talents emerging where we could have growth opportunities here? You know, what are you seeing from our competition where they’re investing in this talent pool at the moment and who’ve you got and how can you kind of predict for us where we should be going in terms of our growth and people development and people acquisition, et cetera, et cetera. And then you become that trusted advisor and become very client-centered rather than that transactional delivery focused individual.

Okay. ⁓ before we close, we have to go back to the flea jar, your story driven keynote on innovative thinking. So the flea jar, you share how the smartest leaders and teams limit themselves. touched on this earlier. How can individuals embrace failure and fresh perspectives to unlock their true full potential? I love failure. You know, I mean, I think it’s a funny thing. it’s really weird the way we frame failure. Like it’s a bad thing as opposed to

absolutely normal. You know, if I’ve got guitar here, I didn’t see it, but a guitar here, you pick a guitar, you fail for months, and then suddenly you succeed. And then someone plays Stairway to Heaven, you go, I’ll play that. And you fail your way to that, you know, and life is a series of failures until you have a recognizable success. And I don’t like the word failure, which we can find another failure, just lessons, learns, know, and I, you know, learnings, well, and I so I think, you know, be excited by failure.

Because no one sets out to fail. don’t go out and do a bit of work and go, well, that didn’t work. didn’t an hour before think this will fail, but I’ll do it anyway. So what do you learn from it? And that’s how you get ahead. I love the feedback loop of failure. I really genuinely do. then different perspectives. Well, it’s a game changer. mean, to take an extreme example, if you had someone sitting in a room by themselves for five decades with no information coming in, how much would they learn?

very, very little. They might think a lot, but they wouldn’t learn much. But if you have somebody who goes to the library all the time and goes to the coffee shops and has debates with people and goes and goes out with their friends and debates and listens to their ideas and shares their ideas, here’s what’s wrong with your ideas. Well, wow, that’s that’s an accelerant like nothing else in the world. So different perspectives are just the most amazing thing. mean, Warren Buffett said, you know, the best investment you’d ever make is yourself, you know, and he said, and he said, the fastest way to do it is to read books. But what does he know? Yeah, it’s true.

I’m quite proud of the acronym I came up with when I was going through failure, which is, which is lose. Cause you never lose. It’s just life offering some experience. I think if you, if you, if you kind of really digest that every time you’ve had these, you know, failures, quote unquote setbacks, you’ve acquired some experience, haven’t you? And you know, next time, okay, maybe I could do it slightly differently or actually I’m richer for it and we just keep, keep moving. Okay. Legal geek, you’ve got a busy year this year on the Legal Geek podcast. And we’re also talking at Legal Geek.

So what are you most excited about that and being on stage there? I love sharing ideas. I love showing ideas. I love sharing my perspective. ⁓ And I get a chance to talk on the main stage ⁓ and to share my, you know, the headlines. It takes so long to get to these conversations like this really, these conversations really, but to share ideas and to, I know I have a very different perspective on AI. I haven’t swallowed the Kool-Aid, know, and I’ve been equally, I’m not a doom monger.

And I find that people like the middle ground I walk, you know, and I, and so I get very excited about giving a more measured, if you like, a meta picture to the whole thing, macro picture, the whole thing. And it always seems to go down well. So I get very excited and I’m going, I’m going to meet very interesting people and I always do a, I never go to a conference and don’t come away with, know, uh, either new friends or new clients. So what’s not to like. Absolutely. And then the final question.

future of, I should probably say machine learning, giving your view on AI. But finally, what impact do you think AI slash machine learning, however you want to take it, will have on the next generation of legal professionals and law firm leaders? And what trends are you going to be watching very closely? I think it depends how it rolls out. mean, in software coding, they’ve got this junior dev death spiral, they’re calling it, where they’ve lost an entire layer of people.

And now no one is qualified to become a senior dev. know, and I think so for me, I hope that law, you know, Harvey and the like come out and say, look, this is the equivalent of a third year associate hire this person, you know, this, this AI software and you won’t need to hire someone. And of course she said, well, that’s very well, but now what? Now what? does, you know, for me, I, and I, and I, the way, I should say every law firm I’ve spoken to, been very humane about this and said, well, you know, we want the next generation. don’t.

It’s not cute to do this. I hope that they, people find, and I wish they’d find a calmer, more measured way to sell in their services and sort of say, this isn’t instead of, it’s to help, it’s to go alongside your associates so they too don’t have to do as much groundwork. So I think there’ll be a big shakeout of law. And I think ⁓ by a country mile, it will be the best thinkers who stand out because the machines can do anything that’s functional, can be done by machines.

You’ve got to do better than the machines. And so if you’re just offering, you know, frankly, commoditized work, that’s bit of a race to the bottom. Good luck. And I think you’ll get lots of companies that will be out there doing cheaper conveyancing and cheaper this and cheaper that. Fine. ⁓ But I think the high end work just in that counterintuitive way that happened with Excel came along will actually be more valuable because of the experts, because of the people. And I would right now would be looking around at my stars and just saying, right, let’s upskill all of you, you know.

Like I said, be more personable, better closing deals, better holding the hand of the client. And I think, and I really think the big change will be people, as usual, will be proactive, going to companies and say, come on, don’t call us when the house is on fire. Call me early, you know. So I think that’s, I I think to me, I think it’s gonna be a great phase for lawyers, because I think it’d be much more about the people and they’ll do the work they want to do much more. And they’ll be interacting with people, which is really a lot of the reason they went into it.

And let’s keep it optimistic and exciting and positive. That’s certainly the energy I’d to bring to the world. And with that Felix, I’m sure you’d have inspired a lot of our listeners today. You probably want to know more. So if they want to know more about you or indeed brilliant thinking, where can they go to find out more? free to share any websites or any social media handles that you’re on and we’ll also include them this episode for you too. Thank you very much. FelixRiley.com is the fastest way. Tap me up on LinkedIn. Always lovely to connect. Always lovely to chat. ⁓

say yes to every coffee and video chat because you never know, Charlie Munger used to do it, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s old partner, he used to take about 10 random meetings a week and he said nine would be, okay, whatever, but said one would be amazing. And he said, so I don’t think people do enough of that, I don’t think people connect enough. So call me old school in this age of AI, but connection seems to work. So yeah, FelixRiley.com, it’s all there and LinkedIn and I’m there.

There we go. Keeping it human. Loved it. Thank you so, much, Felix, for today. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show from all of us here on the League has been podcast sponsored by Cleo, wishing you lots of continued success with brilliant thinking and all the great stuff you get up to and indeed your talks. And hopefully we’ll collaborate again in the future. 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 of

The Legally Speaking Club over on Discord. Go to our website www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com. There’s a link to join our community there. Over and out.