Can AI make the legal system more accessible and human-centred?

This week, I’m joined by Rafie Faruq, CEO of Genie AI, the world’s most secure AI legal assistant. From open source legal knowledge to integrating mindfulness into tech culture, Rafie shares how AI is transforming workflows and reducing burnout and creating a new era of legal accessibility.

If you’re curious about the future of legal tech and want to know more, give this episode a listen now!

So why should you be listening in? 

You can hear Rob and Rafie discussing:

– Genie AI’s Mission is to Empower Everyone to Draft Quality Legal Agreements

– Rafie Faruq’s Diverse Background, From Philosophy and Economics to Machine Learning

– Genie AI’s focus on Open Collaboration, Deep Learning, and Seamless AI Integration

– The Importance of Mindfulness in Fostering a High-Performing and Innovative Culture

– Rafie Envisioning of a Future Where Legal AI Globally Improves Work-Life Balance for Lawyers

Connect with Rafie here – https://uk.linkedin.com/in/rfaruq

Transcript

Robert Hanna  0:01  

On today’s legally speaking podcast, I’m delighted to be joined by Rafie Faruq. Rafie is the CEO of Genie AI, with an MSc in machine learning from UCL during his time at university, Rafie specialized in generative AI, taught by leading researchers at Google DeepMind. Rafie has experience running a tech startup scaling 10s of 1000s of users. He is passionate about building a legal community that is open source legal knowledge and contracts. Along his journey, Raffy has advised the law policy commission and represented the Ministry of Justice on foreign trade missions. So a very warm welcome. Raffy.

Rafie Faruq  0:37  

Great to be here, Rob, thank you for having me.,

Robert Hanna  0:41  

Oh, it’s an absolute pleasure and a big fan of your entrepreneurial journey thus far. But before we get into all of that, we do have a customary icebreaker question here on the legally speaking 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 on a scale of one to 10 if you’ve seen it.

Rafie Faruq  1:01  

Do you know what? That’s a funny one. I mostly know about TV series through other people telling me, because I don’t really watch TV, yeah, but I’ve seen a few trailers and things, and I think it’s 100% accurate. So I’m gonna say 10.

Robert Hanna  1:18  

And we love your sense of humor, Raffy, so that’s why we’re excited to get you on. But we’re putting that on the record 10 and Moving swiftly on. So to begin with, would you mind telling our listeners a bit about your background and career journey?

Rafie Faruq  1:31  

Sure. Would you like me to start from Genie or really, from the start of my personal journey? Let’s

Robert Hanna  1:37  

go right to start your personal journey. So people got a flavor of them, probably leading into GE

Rafie Faruq  1:41  

Sure. So my background is really mixed. I’m a bit of a confusing person. I studied philosophy and economics at university, but I’ve been a lifelong programmer, so I actually did philosophy and econ to learn more about the world and do something different. I then went into industry and became a bond and derivatives trader where I was actually lucky enough to manage the portfolio over a billion pounds, which is way too much responsibility, way too early, managing bonds through the European debt crisis, through Brexit. But I really wanted to get back to tech and have more of a let’s say social positive social impact in the world, rather than just move money around. And so I went back to university, studied machine learning, as you mentioned, with my co founder, Nitish. So that’s where I met Nitish, and I specialized in generative algorithms for text data, which sounds obvious now, but seven years ago, it was a fairly novel thing to do, and so we thought, okay, where’s the obvious place where there’s lots of structured text and legal contracts was the obvious sort of place. And then we set out to speak to probably hundreds of lawyers and law firms and really understand the problem. And, you know, Rob, what really surprised us was that there’s so many documents and contracts and really data around the world and firms and companies, but the information is not really made use of. Rather, you have firms which sort of sometimes make small tweaks to templates and retail re sell that information for 10s of 1000s of pounds. You’ve got in house legal teams who are seen as cost centers and always struggling to keep up with with their workloads. And so we thought, if AI can read all this information and assist people when drafting and reviewing documents, that could be really powerful. And that was the genesis of Genie, yeah.

Robert Hanna  3:50  

And I love that story, and thanks for sharing it. And I want to kind of just go back to those philosophy and economic states LSC, if I may, because before obviously completing MSC as we as we reference, because where did the the interest in AI stem from?

Rafie Faruq  4:07  

I guess I’ve been a lifelong programmer, as I discussed, you know, when I was sort of 1415, in fact, really like 13, I think, making websites in HTML, PHP. So I’ve always been fascinating and fascinated by by programming and how you can use tech to create. It’s all about creation for hopefully a social good and a positive impact. And I think where the philosophy and econ and all these dimensions sort of come together is it’s quite funny. You look when you’re going through life, you think, Hey, why did I do that? Why did I do that? But later in life, I’m not sure if you found this, but things come together, yeah. And now with AI, with my philosophy degree, because that specialized in ethics, I have a really sort of unique angle on the ethics of AI, because I studied. Six University. I also see the economic side of business and finance because, you know, I was a trader for a while. And I see the technological side because of the MSc and machine learning. So there’s quite a variety of angles that actually come together in AI, and hopefully that gives us quite a unique perspective. Yeah, and

Robert Hanna  5:21  

I always talk about this from a skill stacking or experience stacking perspective, you know, all of these things that you do, like, like, you say you’re just building your your own kind of career, your own path, and you pick out things from from those experiences that can help you as you move forward. And like, you just gave some great examples there of how you’ve been able to do that to create Genie. Ai, you’ve touched on it, but it’s super impressive. What you’re what you’re doing, you know, what the world’s most secure? Ai, legal assistant. You know, you’re the CEO there. Tell us a bit more about Genie. Ai, to people who might be completely brand new to

Rafie Faruq  5:55  

1. Yeah. So put simply, Genie is made for business teams and lawyers who have a high volume of legal drafting needs, and typically what you have is, let’s take a business executive at a company of two or 300 people, maybe they don’t have a legal team, or they’re spending lots On on law firms, and they’re asked to draw up all these business as usual contracts, be it to employ people, to sell products, to raise funds. So normally you spend 5000 10,000 pounds with a firm, but now you can go into Genie, and we have an algorithm called create from scratch, where you can basically generate a 3040, page document in minutes that is professionally formatted. Contains all your customized needs specific to your company, contains the laws of the jurisdiction, and we cover most jurisdictions across the world. And you can even then review it on Genie, because, you know, you’re wondering, how do I trust this document from Ai, yeah, so we have a risk flagging algorithm that also reviews the document to help you trust it. So for business teams, this helps them save on legal fees. And we actually find for for legal teams, if they’re in house, they’re typically just really overworked. So it’s about saving the cost of hiring another person, increasing contract turnaround times, and ultimately increasing revenue for the company, because we want lawyers to be seen as not just a cost center, but actually adding value to the company?

Robert Hanna  7:41  

Yeah, I’m really for that. And you know, I’m pro Tech for Good. I’m pro tech for helping reduce the access to justice gap. I’m pro trying to help it from a workplace well being and reducing the overwhelm, the stress, the pressures. And that’s why we want to bring on entrepreneur thought leaders who are really leading that charge? Because I think, you know, legal, Tech for Good, has so many positives for the world, frankly. And so speaking of, you know, big things, and I talk a lot about this in terms of tech businesses, tech businesses without a North Star, I don’t think have miles, you know, they really need to have a North Star, that mission, that vision, and people buy into it along the way, and you build your community. And from that you you go forward. And you know, Genie AI is all about creating a better model for the practice of law, one based on value derived, rather than hours build. So what to you and everyone listening, does Genie AI stand for? And what is the meaning behind Genie AI’s mission?

Rafie Faruq  8:42  

Yeah, that’s a really good question. And I love, also, I love mission driven companies. So our mission is to empower everyone to be able to draft quality legal agreements. So it’s really about empowerment, because, you know, law is all about knowledge. You’ve got knowledge. Lawyers professional support, lawyers in law firms. And also, what’s, what’s so funny Rob is um, lawyers typically specialize in one practice area, but an employment area won’t an employment lawyer will never talk about corporate law. But you know, if you’re a programmer, you can study JavaScript, and then you can study PHP, you can study HTML, whatever it is. There’s no problem. You just You just learn it. But in law is like, No, I must only do this thing that I was permitted to do from a two or four year training program. So it’s very sort of buttoned down and almost like persecuted, you know, yeah,

Robert Hanna  9:53  

yeah, yeah. No, I totally get that. And, you know, I think there’s a bit of sort of reprogram. Thing that could go on there as well in terms of mindset. And I think that’s what you’re you obviously have a big growth mindset and always looking at sort of, you know, what’s next, and, you know, how can I build on this, or how can I pick up this new skill, or whatever it might be. And we had Scott Stevenson on previously, on the show CEO spellbook, and he talked about, you know, you’ve just, sometimes just got to pick up the tool. And you know, if you’re waiting to become the perfectionist of this tool, then it will almost be too late. You know, you’ve kind of got to get out there and test, test, test, and look, let’s talk about the actual functionality of Genie. AI, practically, we’ve talked sort of high level, but, you know, my understanding is you have a legal library of letters, contracts, policies, definitions, clauses. You also have resources and various solutions. So how does Genie AI, in simple terms work talk us through perhaps a very basic process?

Rafie Faruq  10:49  

Yeah, in simple terms, I’ve given the example of a business Exec. So let’s take a lawyer in a team of five or six. So we have quite a lot of construction and manufacturing companies in Genie, and typically they might need to raise funds for a particular construction project. So what they’ll do is they go onto genie and they could search for a template in our template library, and those have been used by hundreds of people, in fact, 1000s of people, across seven years. So we’ve iterated them, made them good quality. Or if you can’t find something there, they could just create a document from scratch with our AI, which will generate a 3040, page agreement. Or you may have your own document. You may have your own template, or a Counterparty may give you a document to review so you can also upload that to Genie. A big problem for lawyers is document formatting, which sounds boring, but actually in many of these companies, these legal, legal tech companies, when you upload Word documents, everything gets messed up. The numbering, comments, track changes. So we import all of that. We import the styles, the comments, the track changes, everything. And then you can literally use our AI chat on the left hand side of your documents, as well as some quick AI buttons like explain, amend and you can risk, review your document, spot red flags, make updates, make amendments, and eventually send it out to to reshare it with your counterparty. Love

Robert Hanna  12:37  

it and look. It’s saving time. It’s more efficient. It’s more productive. You know, we obviously do a lot of work with Cleo, who we’ve partnered with for many years. I remember Jack Newton saying just last year at an event at Canada house, you know, AI is a legal workforce multiplier. You know, you actually think about how, if it’s used for good, you can really amplify your work. And that’s a great case of the example of productivity gains and efficiency gains through to what you’ve articulated. You touched on it a bit earlier, but just sort of the building of Genie. Ai, would you mind sort of explaining a bit more of the journey to where it is today? I’d be curious to learn more.

Rafie Faruq  13:18  

Sure, it’s been seven years now, so there’s a lot to look back on, actually, yeah, yeah. I think there’s been various phases of Genie. And you can also track it with the phases of AI, because, as you mentioned in the beginning, I wrote my thesis on generative AI. And you can see a video from our sort of entrepreneur first demo day. So entrepreneur first is like a tech incubator. And I was talking about, imagine a world where you could generate contracts end to end. Yeah, with Gen AI before, you know, much before GP GPT two, or, I think even GPT one, actually. And now it’s all possible. But back then, we were using what’s called the discriminative AI, yeah, which is, which was the prevailing approach back then. And we were using small models, small custom made models that could predict certain things for certain tasks. And again, that was the way machine learning was done, and then transformers came out, and you could start to generate text. So we were using models like Bert for a while, and then, of course, the GPT three plus models came out. And we were quite lucky, because we have coastal ventures as an investor, and they also invest in the open AI. So we’ve got some early access there, and we’re able to integrate them, like giving you a bit of a technical machine learning journey. I’m not sure if that was the journey you were looking for, but those the sort of phases of AI in our company. Yeah,

Robert Hanna  14:58  

and look, there’s going to be a lot of talk. We’ve obviously, we’re kind of going to be moving away from generative AI to a lot more talk on a sort of agentic AI as well this year, which I’m, you know, paying a lot of attention in in terms of the business I’m involved in. But I guess an AI question for you is, how do you think legal AI will impact the global economy over the coming years?

Rafie Faruq  15:19  

Legal AI? Did you say or AI in general? Yeah, yeah. This is also, like, really interesting for our company, because what we’re trying to measure right now is how many people have we actually helped employ, or have been employed on our paper, how many products have been sold, how much funds have been raised. We have a construction company in Australia that builds infrastructure and bridges, and we’re like, okay, have we built a bridge in Australia or, like, you know, the paper that it was drafted on. So this is real economy stuff, and that’s what’s really exciting. Contracts and legal is just a small part of the story. It’s like, okay, what is the impact you’re having? So some people see contracting as a tax on the global economy. It’s sort of an inefficiency that prevents business from from happening, but a necessary evil, if you like, because you need to cover risk and so on. But if we can minimize that gap across all business globally, which is sort of another aim of ours, then we can make the entire global economy more efficient and productive. So I think it can have a really serious impact on global efficiency.

Robert Hanna  16:36  

Yeah, no. And you know, with four huge impact. And we want to get the voices of people we think are going to hopefully ultimately shape and change the world. And I think obviously what you’re building is great. I guess another follow up question to that sticking with impact, what do you see as the impact of combining Genie’s open app with deep learning? And if you want to give any definitions for people that, again, might be at sort of the new at sort of the newbie level, for that, just to kind of get people with us, feel free to do so, just from a deep learning point of view, for sure,

Rafie Faruq  17:09  

that’s a nice question. So one of our values at Genie is open, because coming into this as two programmers myself and Nitish and seeing laws so closed and, you know, hiding all the precedents the templates, we thought, let’s just give everyone access. So people have been able to access our template library. Excuse me for a few years for free, you can just search for them on Google, and this is what we mean by open app. And very soon, you’re going to be able to access Genie without even logging in, and use the AI draft contracts, review contracts, customize them with no accounts, with without paying based on our freemium business model, and that’s really powerful, because you’re just giving away everything to get more usage. And deep learning is just really the basis of most machine learning these days. It just means using deep neural nets. So generative AI is actually deep learning. But we also talk about agenda Ki, as you mentioned. But the power of all of this, when everything is open and free to use, is for us, really exciting from a product perspective.

Robert Hanna  18:37  

Yeah, I love that, and I remember we’ve had quite a few product people come on the show, and they says a great phrase in product, fall in love with the problem, not the solution, you know. And I think you’re, I can see you sort of nodding to that as well. It’s so true, isn’t it? I think particularly if you’re trying to innovate, you’ve really got to lean into what is that pain point? What is that problem? And that leads nicely onto building a startup, because you’ve successfully scaled a tech startup before. What lessons from that venture have been most valuable in building Junior AI,

Rafie Faruq  19:13  

yeah, so that was my first startup, and I would say really the basics around books like lean startup, which talk about, as you mentioned, quick iteration, but also really understanding and listening to the customer. So I actually think this is our biggest strength at Genie, which is we have such a like, I want to say most of our energy goes into customer research. Yeah, I conducted last year in a space of three months, over 100 user interviews myself. So every Friday, we have user interview day where we basically speak to our. Is, and that’s every week. So that’s the mistake I made in my last company, we created a really complex, amazing solution, which people use, but not that much. Yeah, and that’s always a problem in tech. Companies like tech people love to build technologically advanced stuff. But as you’ve probably heard from other speakers, is it what the what the customer wants? That’s always the key?

Robert Hanna  20:28  

Yeah, it’s being client centric, right? And it’s being ferociously centered around what is important for them. I think sometimes there is an element, though there’s a famous isn’t there? Henry Ford quote, I think you know, if I’d have asked my customers what they want, they would have wanted faster horses. And obviously it was the automobile that was the breakthrough innovation. But your point being, though, I think really, you should be collaborating. You should be giving your customers, your people that are already in that genie AI ecosystem, a voice and hearing that and partnering with them, and they’ll obviously continue to use champion and your your growth from there. And I’m a big advocate for being as client centric as possible. And look, entrepreneurship is hard, and I like to be very candid with our listeners, because I want to inspire people that might be sat there or finishing studies or been in a career for many, many years, and they’ve held back from starting. I always like to give a very honest overview. So I’d like to get your perspective on challenges and opportunities. What have been the challenges and opportunities you’ve encountered when introducing sort of AI driven legal secure solutions across multiple legal jurisdictions? Because I’m sure that’s interesting. And as an extension to that, how do you see sort of venture capital investment to expand globally.

Rafie Faruq  21:42  

Yeah, yeah. I mean, my advice to first time entrepreneurs is, don’t, and if you still want to do it, then do but generally, at all costs, it’s probably, for most people, not a good idea. Sort of like sports. Did you ever like a favorite sport? Or,

Robert Hanna  22:08  

yeah, this is another big Liverpool football fan club over here. And I played lots of sports, rugby, etc, etc, over the years.

Rafie Faruq  22:16  

Nice. Nice, nice. So then I mean, you’ll know, then like to be a top professional sportsman, the sacrifice is just unreal, yeah, like it’s inhuman. You have to give up just so much of your life, your friends, your family, your things you’d like to do to be at the very top. And competitive markets are very similar, perfect competition creates a space where only Is Winner takes most, if not winner takes all. And so that’s really the truth of entrepreneurship. It’s a long solitary path of giving everything up. Legal AI specifically is a competitive market. Legal has been around for a while. There have been phases, I think, with the gen one legal AI companies who were using, like, very early, rudimentary, maybe rules based methods. Then we have the gen two companies, which I would say Genie is in that category started seven years ago, using both discriminative and generative AI. And then you have Gen three companies who are coming in now, just after open, AI and so on. No, no. Generation is better or worse. They each have pros and cons. But, yes, I mean, I could talk also about expanding globally, but I want to just pause there, see where you want to directly spread. No, I think,

Robert Hanna  23:53  

I think it’s great and like, it’s just, you know, what I call evolution of entrepreneurship, isn’t there? There’s different, you know, different things coming out. Even if you start a product that’s so innovative tomorrow, it’ll be out of day, the next out of date, the next day. It’s just, just how the world works. It’s why, you know, companies like Amazon, they’re so focused on continuous improvement. You know, they’re so focused on that because obviously, that’s just the way the world is going. But yeah, feel free to to carry on in that direction.

Rafie Faruq  24:18  

Yeah, so on, on continuous improvement. First of all, maybe there’s the idea of iterative innovation and disruptive innovation. So you need both. In a startup, iteration will keep you going day to day, and many iterations create a big disruption. In fact, Jim Collins is a big proponent of that. If you read books like Good to Great, it’s just like turning the mill along one path for a really, really long time. But on the other hand, when you take companies like open AI, it seems like they had more of a I mean, you could argue it both ways, because there was cheap. 123, and so on. But it seems more of a disruptive, discontinuous innovation, where Sam Altman was basically like, go build AGI and just see what happens. So you need to take some big bets that are sometimes intuition based, sometimes starting at the end and working backwards in terms of how you get there. And sometimes, in fact, most of the time, if you really have an innovation, everyone’s going to think you’re wrong, yeah, yeah.

Robert Hanna  25:32  

And you need to be strong enough to stand up to that. And I just want to kind of go back to the Jim Collins, it’s well read, Good to Great, because it is a brilliant book, and you’re referring to the flywheel there, and actually being able to capture, you know, it’s almost like, you know, maintaining that momentum. When you have these inputs, you need to find a system that’s going to capture that energy to keep catapulting you so you can keep going forward, keep innovating, keep, you know, building on what you put in. And I think it’s a great analogy. So really appreciate you sharing that one switch. Ladies a little bit to talk about law policy commission, because you have advised the law policy commission, published by the Law Society. You’ve also represented the Ministry of Justice on foreign trade missions. So what did you learn during those particular experiences?

Rafie Faruq  26:15  

Yeah, I think mainly the UK government’s actually pretty good when it comes to sort of legal tech and legal in general, when you look at the US compared to the UK. In the UK, for example, you can actually give legal advice as a non law firm, as long as you don’t give advice for what’s called non reserve activities, things like wills, probate, criminal So, and I mean, the word legal advice itself is a strange concept. It’s not, I believe it’s not actually in any regulations or legislation. It’s more something that you may come up against in case law and things, but in the US, if you try to give legal advice, or if your product potentially goes towards that area, it’s a lot more risky, because they have what’s called UPL, the unauthorized practice of law. And not only that, but all the laws differ from state to state. So the US is quite strict, and we also have ABS is in the UK, which are alternative business structures where non lawyers can create law firms in the US, I think only Nevada offers that, that someone should, should check that, but the discussion has been had in various states, and actually push back against so it’s a fairly strict regime there, and that’s what I’ve really liked about the UK. They’re very open. They’re investing in legal tech case UK case law, that case law is now available via our new website and portal. So yeah, good things are happening, and for us to be able to be part of the conversation at the government level has been a really great honor.

Robert Hanna  28:18  

Yeah, yeah, and it’s inspiring, and it again, lends back to what I like to discuss, which is Tech for Good. You know, again, you gave some good, good context around that and your role. What role do you see? Then let’s sort of think about law and accessibility, because, again, it’s a big theme and things that we’re passionate about here on the show. And what role do you see generative AI sort of playing in making the legal system more accessible. And what emerging trends in AI and legal tech are you most excited to see?

Rafie Faruq  28:47  

Yeah, I mean accessibility and access to justice, I think has been massively improved through Gen AI. I think the people who have most again are actually those who are perhaps least well off in society, providing you have access, at least to a sort of computer and internet, because you now have individuals all over the world, like, let’s say you’re improving the plumbing in your bathroom or fixing some pipes or something. Historically, people wouldn’t get contracts for that, but now, at the very least, you can spit something out of chat GPT and hope for the best. It’s probably not going to be very legally robust, but at Genie, what we’re doing is we’re giving away as much as we can for free. So we have a free tier where all these people and individuals can come on the platform and just get out two or three contracts for free without paying anything. And the reason we do that is for access to justice so everyone can can use genie and get their legals done. Because historically. You people couldn’t, couldn’t do that. It was such a opaque black box.

Robert Hanna  30:06  

Yeah, and I think that’s what’s important about this. You know, this is giving people an opportunity to hopefully have access to things that historically just weren’t invented. And so, you know, the puck is definitely going in this direction. It’s hopefully going to get better, more helpful, quicker, faster, all of that good stuff. So let’s talk about shaping the future of sort of an AI driven legal workflow. Then can you give us an insight into how seamless AI integration is currently transforming traditional processes?

Rafie Faruq  30:38  

Yeah, for sure. So you want just to clarify, you want just to clarify. You want to know more about where things are going with legal aid. Ai going forward, right? Yeah, yeah. This is a really interesting one, probably one of my favorite topics right now, because, you know, as as business leaders, we have to forecast into the future. Yeah? So we had discriminative AI, we had generative AI, and people saying this word agentic AI. That is going to be a big theme this year, and maybe I’ll say Genie, Genie’s perspective, but then I’ll also provide some critique around agenda ki as well. So for Genie, it’s brilliant, really, because the company that can win from agenda Ki is the company, company that has the most possible tools and actions for the agent to use. And what agenda ki does is basically an AI model that can semi autonomously, autonomously or autonomously, take advantage of all sorts of different actions based on data and the environment around it, so it can make a plan and execute that plan by itself, and moreover, it may be able to do that proactively as well without you even giving instructions. Yep. So for us, we’ve spent seven years building this docx, native, real time collaborative editor where you can do all sorts of editing actions, both legal, specific and like Microsoft Word and and beyond, so not just writing and track changes, but also flagging risks and bringing up issues and so on and so having an agent be able to control all of that is for us, super powerful. Because now you can say, as a user, hey, can you spin up a 40 page MSA agreement, highlight the key problems in red, suggest amendments and track changes and then email this to John. All of that can be done in one prompt, which is pretty nuts.

Robert Hanna  33:01  

It’s it’s pretty evolutionary, isn’t it? I think, you know, my late grandfather had a law firm in the 1950s you know, I think he would, he would struggle to comprehend, sort of, you know, that that that sort of world, but it’s the world, and that’s the way things are, things are going. And I think it’s hugely exciting, and that’s why we’re keen to keep having these conversations on the show to hopefully educate and inform and inspire people. I know something you’re very passionate about and we’ve touched on, but I want to ask a sort of deeper question. Is around ethics, particularly linked to AI, do you strongly believe the need for open source collaboration and industry standards to ensure transparency in AI applications?

Rafie Faruq  33:42  

Yeah, I do quite strongly believe in open source. You know, we that’s why we make all of our templates freely available. That’s why you can sign up for free and use a product for free. And I think it is great as much as I’m not necessarily. Well, I’ve got got mixed feelings about meta, let’s say, but the fact that they have released their models with an open source license, I think is really, really good and important for society. I think the one of the biggest things we can do for ethical AI is actually just to give everyone free and equal access to it, because what you don’t want is like a society of technocrats, where the rich and the powerful benefit the most from AI. AI is actually a great opportunity to equalize society and have those least off most benefit. And I think that is sort of happening actually, which is, which is really exciting,

Robert Hanna  34:42  

yeah, and, you know, I think everyone would like to see a little bit more of that leveling of the playing field to help people and, you know, a kinder, more collaborative world. You know, I think that would be, would be great. And something, obviously, we champion something else that you have. Been, is a mediator, a lifelong mediator. So I would like to sort of talk a little bit more about wellness being the core of Genie AI’s creation. How has sort of mindfulness influenced the design and culture at Genie AI,

Rafie Faruq  35:16  

yeah, for sure. I think we went to say meditator there. But, but absolutely, with mindfulness and wellness, it’s a big theme for us. Excuse me how the sneezes today. So in my view, if you want to achieve high performance, you need to do that with the least possible stress, because high performance and stress sometimes will often come together, and to do that, we need to take care of our well being. And so at Genie we run regular meditations, yoga sessions, breath work sessions. We have a company retreat coming up just next week, and there’ll be well being sessions there. And you know it, it’s, yes, it’s partly about feeling good, not being stressed, being relaxed, which creates a flow state. But it’s also about receiving inspiration and downloads of brilliant ideas, because I believe there’s going to be a whole new way of being in society. Because when AI does, like most things, it’s practically thinking for us. On the one hand, okay, that’s potentially bad, because we don’t know anything anymore, but on the other hand, were we ever supposed to be like, infinite stores of knowledge and stuff our brains with facts? Maybe not. So, yeah, go, go, go on. Yeah,

Robert Hanna  36:54  

it’s true. And I’ve been having a lot of sort of dinner discussions over the years about the future and AI and like, where we know what is the sort of purpose and where is this going. So, yeah, it just sort of brought a smile to my face when you were touching on that, because it’s true, isn’t it? It sort of makes you think really deeply. And, you know, we’ve had Elizabeth Rimmer, CEO of law care, come on, obviously, the largest sort of mental health charity, well being in the profession. Come on. And shared insights and tips. And it’s great that you as a sort of, you know, advanced tech, you know, within legal business that are really putting that at the core of your of your sort of culture. And I think the more leaders that do do that, the better. And because burnout is real, and burnout is a growing concern in the legal profession. So how can AI actively contribute to reducing stress and potentially improving work life balance for lawyers, which has always been a bit of a challenge, particularly in the sort of big law world, so they can actually focus on perhaps more meaningful work,

Rafie Faruq  37:49  

absolutely. And you know, you and your and all the listeners will know the arguments around, okay, AI improving efficiency so people get more time back and so on. And I think that’s true, but it’s a little bit boring, maybe, like we’ve heard that before many times. What I’m quite excited about is purpose. If people feel like they have purpose, autonomy and are getting recognition in their company, that makes them feel good. Yeah, and yeah, what we’re often hearing is with in House lawyers, they want to work on the really exciting stuff, like that big investment deal, that big m&a acquisition, they want to advise the CEO. They don’t want to be drawing up that cons with example, where they had to draw up a contract for, like, a vending machine, or, like, you know, there’s basic employment contracts, yeah. And that’s really where AI can, can help give them back purpose, yeah. And

Robert Hanna  38:54  

I’m a big fan for purpose, because putting my sort of legal recruiting hat on, and, you know, advising people through career moves, I really strongly encourage them to do that deep work, to think about what is the purpose, what do they want to get from their careers, more than just turning up for a role and taking a paycheck, let’s talk about creativity. Because, again, we’ve had people, and I’ve run events where people have strong arguments and views on this link to sort of AI and human creativity. You believe AI can enhance human experience and enhance creativity and safeguard wellbeing? How do you envision AI being used to create more personalized human approaches?

Rafie Faruq  39:34  

Yeah, really interesting. I think there’s two types of creativity there is drawing from past knowledge, and there’s inspiration? Yeah, I want to say drawing from past knowledge and drawing from new new knowledge. But let’s just call the latter inspiration. And so AI is really great at using all this past data to come come up with all sorts of ideas, and even new ideas. And that does do as well as humans in many or most creative tasks, but what AI will never be able to do is be inspired. And, you know, as humans, I’m not sure we really understand what inspiration is ourselves yet, but that thing, when you go for a walk, or you’re in a flow state, and you just get an idea pop into your mind from nowhere, and it just happens to be the exact solution that you need, or solution to your problem, that I think, is where humanity is going. And actually that’s quite exciting, because we’re learning more about the human mind and this potential. And actually, if AI can do the maybe grunt work of what we were doing in the past, memorizing facts, drawing influences, doing calculations, we can move to that like really high creative space of of inspiration and downloading new ideas. Yeah,

Robert Hanna  41:02  

I and there’s a reason, okay, I have a dog, but I’m I walk every day. You know? I think if you’re struggling for ideas, go for a walk like it’s amazing, probably the mornings when I’m on that that walking my dog is my most creative thoughts, and I’m always capturing them, or maybe putting them into my AI personal assistant, and then trying to work on developing those flows, whatever it might be. But if you’re struggling for ideas and lacking creativity, a body in motion, the amazing like you say, that flow state, things come to your mind that you know just make sense, or your best moments. And sometimes it’s not the amount of hours you work in the day, it’s the quality. And I think if you can get yourself into that, that space, you know that 510, minutes, whatever it might be, where you’re kind of really in flow can be super, super powerful, and talking of powerful, I want to talk about LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking site. I’m a big advocate for LinkedIn. I’m regularly there, but in one of your most recent LinkedIn posts, you share big law firms should partner with or acquire AI companies, not for internal efficiency, but for external client services. So could you tell us more about why firms should seek external services?

Rafie Faruq  42:09  

Yeah, it’s interesting once we’ve worked with with big law firms in the past, and there’s great people there, and we’ve had some really good relationships, but they do really, really struggle to procure legal tech, as probably everyone knows, in terms of your listeners, they struggle because of data security, their own, their client’s data, the partnership structure, the billable hour. They don’t want to be more efficient, necessarily. And so my view, for big firms is people procure big firms because they want that high touch, opinionated human interaction from human experts, yeah, and so they should double down on that really, like, that’s what’s drawing their profits. And with regards to AI, it’s a they’re going to really struggle to implement it anyway, in a in a way that helps, and not just a way that’s like for visuals or a bit of marketing, but B, it’s not really their core business model anyway. Like efficiency is not what they’re selling. They’re selling high touch, tailored services. And so what they should do, and especially if you read books like The Innovators Dilemma, they should actually just buy out legal AI companies and but keep them like relatively separate to to the law firm, because they need to operate a different business model in order for the legal AI company to be efficient and effective, and the law firm needs a different business model, which it currently has to optimize for high touch services. Yeah,

Robert Hanna  43:38  

I like that. I like the way that you’re thinking, I think it makes a lot of a lot of sense. And look, it’s clear that, you know, Genie AI is going to go on to do some some super exciting things. So I guess, before we close, you know, what is your vision for the legal profession in the next, I don’t know, 510, years, and how do you see Genie AI playing a key role in that transformation?

Rafie Faruq  44:01  

Yeah, what I really want to see is the big themes in legal fixed. Someone once told me, like, what they want from Genie is legal fixed. Just like, Yeah, great. Thanks for that. But, but still, like, you know, everyone knows that there are problems and the big themes around the business model, people are never happy with a billable hour. So we want to build by value, not by time, burnout, the way lawyers are treated in businesses seen as cost centers, or in this hierarchical structure of law firms whether you’re almost selling your body because you’re selling your hours, yeah, being able to measure like, what is a good quality document, and finally, giving everyone access to be able to draft quality legal agreements. So by the end of this whole legal AI phase in. There’ll be no end, of course, but what we want to see is a society where everyone is empowered to draft quality agreements with the cost of legals dropped to become accessible to everyone, where lawyers are empowered and inspired to do their best work on exciting, difficult, complex legal projects, and ultimately, where the business model was one, where it’s based on value, and this is where we see, see the future going,

Robert Hanna  45:31  

Yeah, and we absolutely support that future. And I think you’re giving people that empowerment is going to be fantastic for you, horribly, sort of exciting in terms of those people that are listening in right now, because it just never existed before. And you think in the next 10 years that people are taking action on things, and you’ve been a part of that solution. That’s very, very, very exciting. Look, this has been an absolutely fascinating discussion. If our listeners want to learn more about your journey, or indeed, Genie AI, where can they go to find out more? Feel free to share any websites, any social media handles. We’ll also include in this episode for you.

Rafie Faruq  46:06  

Absolutely they can check it on our website, www.Genieai.co, do people say the www?

Robert Hanna  46:20  

We’re talking very forward, but we’ll keep it a little bit old school. We can, we’re keeping the www in there.

Rafie Faruq  46:26  

That’s great. And they can also find us, find our social media on LinkedIn, Genie AI, YouTube, and of course, I’m Ravi Faruq, also on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn. So, yeah,

Robert Hanna  46:38  

fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Ravi. It’s been an app. Ravi. Ravi, Ravi, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Really, really enjoyed it. So from all of us on the leaders speaking podcast sponsored by Clio, wishing you lots of continued success with your career and indeed, what you’re building with Genie AI. But now, from all of us over and out.