On today’s Legally Speaking Podcast, I’m delighted to be joined by Philip Young.

Philip is the Co-Founder of Garfield AI, the first SRA-regulated AI legal services firm. He was a City Lawyer for 25 years and previously a Partner at a specialist law firm. Philip has experience in a range of commercial cases. 

Upon leaving the City, Philip focused his attention on large language models – and passionate about access to justice, leading him to create Garfield AI.

So why should you be listening in? 

You can hear Rob and Philip discussing:

– Garfield AI Being the First SRA-Regulated AI Legal Services Firm

– How Philip Leveraged ChatGPT-4 Technology to Create Garfield AI

– Using a Hybrid Approach of Deterministic, Expert and Probabilistic AI Systems

– What Garfield AI aims to Improve by Making Legal Processes More Accessible and Affordable

– The Future of AI in Legal Services and the Removal of Repetitive, Administrative Tasks

Connect with Chris here – https://uk.linkedin.com/in/philip-young-091b665

Transcript

Philip Young  0:00  

We have basically an entirely synthetic county court system that’s just sat in code on our systems, which I think about is an amazing concept. This sort of technology is going to take away a lot of the very time intensive, repetitive administrative stuff that lawyers have to do that don’t enjoy either. Why not build something to help people like that? And that thought particularly came into sharp focus in April, May 2023 when chat GPT four came out, and that was such a big jump in capability from chat GPT 3.5 I thought, well, we could build something with chat GPT four. And so that’s really where Garfield came from. It started as a hobby, but very rapidly became a very serious thing, and now it’s an even more serious thing.

Robert Hanna  0:38  

On today’s legally speaking podcast, I’m delighted to be joined by Philip Young. Philip is the co founder of Garfield AI, the first SRA regulated AI legal services firm. He was a city lawyer for over 25 years and previously a partner at a specialist law firm. Philip has experience in a range of commercial cases. Upon leaving the city, Philip focused his attention to large language models, and is passionate about access to justice, leading him to create Garfield AI. So a very big, warm welcome. Philip,

Philip Young  1:07  

Hi, Rob. Thank you for the introduction, and glad to be able to join you. Oh, I’m absolutely

Robert Hanna  1:11  

delighted to have you on the show. I know you’ve been in very high demand in recent weeks and months, but before we get into your journey and everything you’re getting up to over at Garfield AI, we do have a cheeky, customary icebreaker question here on the leaves, being podcast, which is on the scale of one to 1010, being very real. What would you rate the hit TV series suits in terms of its reality of the law? If you’ve seen it?

Philip Young  1:34  

Okay, I’m only distantly aware of suits. Is that the the TV series that Prince Harry’s wife was yes, yes. So can I be your typical lawyer? Because I’ve not seen it. I’m gonna go right down the middle and go for five, because I don’t know whether it’s zero or 10. Well, gorgeous, yeah, and that’s

Robert Hanna  1:53  

a fairly justified five. I’ve also given it five, and I’ve seen it. So we’re great minds. And with that, we’re going to move swiftly on to talk all about you to begin with, Philip, would you mind telling our listeners a bit about your background and career journey?

Philip Young  2:06  

Yes. So I’m originally from Derbyshire in the Peak District, and I went to a local comprehensive school, and from there, I went to Durham to read law, which is a very fine university, and enjoyed myself very much probably focused a bit too much on, not so much the law, but sort of extracurricular activities. That’s what university is really about, my opinion. And then I came down to the city to practice. I qualified into, I joined, after qualification, the firm Baker McKenzie in London, and I was there for eight years. Really, really fun. Excellent, eight years. Brilliant work, brilliant people, you know, made friends for life. Really from that, and then, much to my family’s, I think, probably shock slash disappointment, I actually sort of stepped away from bakers rather than go down the partnership track. And I co founded with two other guys, the firm that is now cooking and Keenan. And that is that that is a specialist litigation arbitration firm in the city. It’s an excellent firm does really excellent work. Brilliant people, and stepped away from them about 2022 I think yes, 2022 so about three years ago, really, because COVID had happened, and I wanted to do some travelling. And that’s really where, where sort of Garfield comes from. Sort of Garfield comes from, sort of what happened in late 2022 and particularly what happened in late 2023 and maybe we want to get onto those topics via other questions.

Robert Hanna  3:41  

Yeah, no, absolutely. And, yeah, I just encourage our listeners, we’ve had Luke Harrison actually come on, and a lot of the London international disputes week go and check out that great content we’ve done before. And Derbyshire, well, I’m a Leicestershire lad, so not a million miles away from from where you you were. Yeah. Let’s talk about Garfield AI. So I was going to say, firstly, Where did the name come from? And what is Garfield AI, for folks that may be less familiar.

Philip Young  4:04  

So the name came from ninjo that sort of stuck. So ever since I was at bakers in the late 90s, early noughties, I had a friend. There a lot of friends there, but one of them was a guy called Garfield Smith who nowadays has his own boutique technology practice in London. He focuses very much on sort of early stage and startup tech companies. And he spent years saying to me, you should have been a technology lawyer, Philip, because he knew I’m basically a giant nerd at heart. I used to respond to say, well, Garfield, you should have been a litigator mate, because litigation is clearly better than being technology lawyer. Anyway, when I started this, I realised that Garfield had won. So I said, from Garfield, you’ve won. We’re gonna we just have to call it after you. So we call you. So we call him Robin Garfield, with the idea of coming up with a better name, but, but Garfield pointed out there is no better name. Obviously, it’s a bit biassed, and then we couldn’t, no one could think of a better name. I couldn’t think of a better name. Dan couldn’t think of a better name. Members of our team could think of a better name. All sorts of. People could not think of a better name, so Garfield is sort of stuck. And I think Garfield feels sort of 50% flattered and 50% puzzled by all of this. So that’s where the name comes from, and in terms of the genesis of the whole thing. So my brother in law is a lovely guy called Andy. He has got a plumbing business up near Sheffield, and from time to time, people just didn’t pay him, not because of service issues, not because they were insolvent, because those things are understandable and legitimate, but just because they knew that small business people just don’t have the time to write letters, to fill in court forms, to chase debts. And so, of course, cynical business people try and get discounts or get things written off. And this was probably overkill, but me as a good brother in law, would come in as a city lawyer and help me get paid. Because, as I do keep saying, you know, for you know, city lawyers, 3000 pounds, 5000 pounds, even 10,000 pounds, is not hugely material for a company and will be written off by a law firm, but to somebody like Andy, you know, it says summer holiday, so they simply can’t afford to write it off, and they don’t know what to do if they don’t have help. Have help. And I thought, why not build something to help people like that? And that thought particularly came into sharp focus in April, May 2023 when chat GPT four came out. And that was such a big jump in capability from chat GPT 3.5 that I thought, well, we could build something with chat GPT four. And then I thought, why not build something to help Andy? And so that’s really where, where Garfield came from. It started as a hobby, but very rapidly became a very serious thing. And now it’s, it’s an even more serious thing, yeah,

Robert Hanna  6:30  

and it is serious. I mean, you’re everywhere, and what a lovely, a lovely thing to do as well. You know, in terms of, obviously seeing a family member with a with a problem, and you’ve gone above and beyond to hold that handsome so again, a lot of our listeners, they’re still sort of educating themselves on AI and trying to get that grapple the hands around it. So, you know, in very simple terms, I want to talk about Garfield AI’s process so it lands with them. So drop it invoice to get started handle all the correspondence and recover your debt as swiftly as possible. So talk our listeners through how Garfield AI actually works. So

Philip Young  7:09  

Garfield seeks to replicate what a good law firm would do if pursuing a small debt claim on behalf of a client. So it starts with a triage stage where you drop documents into Garfield, and Garfield tries to understand what sort of claim it is, and if it isn’t a small debt claim, Garfield will then politely reject it. But if it is a small debt claim, then Garfield will then tell you what information is understood, so you can understand what the AI understands, so there’s been no misunderstanding between you, the user, and Garfield. And then Garfield will give you options as to the next steps, and it will do that throughout the whole of the life cycle of a small debt claim, depending on where it goes, if it gets paid or settled pre action, brilliant. You’re done. Garfield’s helped you. If you have to issue a claim form, Garfield will draft that for you and particulars, and when you approve it, will send it to court. Obviously, the court serves small debt claims, so you don’t have to do service. And then, depending on where the claim goes thereafter, Garfield helps you with that. So if your claim gets paid or settled, brilliant. If you get an admission, Garfield helps you with the admission form. If you get ignored, Garfield helps you apply for default judgement and sends those documents to the court. And if you’ve got a defence, Garfield helps you deal with the defence up to the edge of trial. So Garfield will go up to the main edge of trials. It will do for you at the trial stage, a little bundle, PDF bundle of all the documents. It’ll do you as little skeleton argument. It’ll do some talking notes, all of those sorts of things. One thing Garfield can’t do, and maybe at some point this might happen in the future, that I’ve got some philosophical reservations about this is it can’t do advocacy at court for you now in a small debt claim, of course, you’re not supposed to need a lawyer. You’re supposed to be able to do that yourself, but if you want, you could always send along a barrister or solicitor to do that for you. But Goff would should have sort of got you to that point. And it’s sort of my hope with this product that eventually you’ll get to point where it’s well enough known and respected by the business community in England and Wales. But actually, the sort of people that don’t pay debts because they’re just being difficult, when they get a letter from Garfield, they’ll be like, oh, there’s no point messing with this. It’s just going to keep coming. It’s not causing the other side anything. So we might as well just sort of settle up and behave ourselves. In which case, in which case, I might have actually done some good in my life?

Robert Hanna  9:26  

Well, I think you would have done a hell of a lot of good, to be frank, just again for our listeners, listening, we’ve got a variety of people, lawyers, people curious about the law what qualifies as a small debt claim, just in terms of a definition, if you like. And then I want to go on to talking about the actual build around it, but yeah, just to sort of give a definition when it comes to that.

Philip Young  9:46  

So there’s various features that make something a small debt claim. First of all, it’s got to be a claim in debt, so a claim for damages wouldn’t qualify. So in reality, it’s got to be a claim that comes out of a there’s basically. Been invoiced that comes out of a contract for sale of goods or the supplier services. There’s also debt claims, of course, that come out of loan agreements. But at the moment, we’re not managing those. We’re going to bolt that on at some point, I think, because we’re trying to start in a confined way, has to be a claim for less than 10,000 pounds, and it also has to be a fairly simple claim. So you do sometimes see debt claims that are under 10,000 pounds but are horrendously complicated with vast quantities of documents. And that’s that that sometimes you’ll find a district judge will say that’s not a small debt claim that’s going up to fast track or intermediate track. So you’re thinking basically under 10,000 pounds debt, debt claims and reasonably straightforward, so not vast quantities of documents and huge amounts of correspondence where people Biffle with

Robert Hanna  10:45  

each other, yeah, okay, well, thanks for giving such a concise and easy to understand response to that. And I guess that leads nicely onto the building of Garfield. Ai, you’re talking before about, obviously, chatgpt, and you know the various models that have been coming out. But could you share a bit of your step by step process of actually building Garfield AI to where it is today.

Philip Young  11:04  

So the first step was really, I had to find somebody who could help me, because, okay, I’m getting on a bit in years now. I’ve got great well, what’s left of my hair has gone grey, and like a lot of my generation, I sort of grew up in the 1980s learning the eight bit computers and learning programme and things, and so I’m slightly nerdy, so I knew I could build some of it, but I knew that there was plenty of stuff I couldn’t build. So the first thing I did is I went off and found my co founder, Dan, who’s a completely brilliant guy, very, very clever. He He’s very keen to stress he’s got a background in quantum physics, because the press keeps calling him a quantum physicist, and that’s caused quite a lot of amusement, where people have been sort of common. Been sort of commenting on the comment section of the FT, saying he can’t be a quantum physicist. He doesn’t have a doctorate, which is, I think a bit irks him for poor Dan, because he was reading a doctorate in photonics, which is really clever stuff, and then dropped out of that to go all in on this. So at some point he will go back and he will be Dr Dan. But anyway, I found him, and he’s he’s also by by sort of trade, a programmer as well as quantum physicist. And then we started building this thing together. And then as we realised this was a really serious thing, we started to scale the team. So there’s now five of us. There’s two front end guys who are just wizards at what they do Pablo and Harry and another back end guy alongside Dan called James, who’s also a wizard, and sometimes they allow me to do some coding, and then they they’re quite kind about my efforts, and probably just sort of shake their head behind closed doors. But what we set out to do, as I said, was trying to replicate the way a good law firm would operate, and we tried to ensure that all of the guardrails constraints a lawyer would have in mind are applicable as well in this sort of product. So we sort of took a design decision early on that we were going to build a sort of hybrid of a deterministic system and an expert system and a probabilistic AI. And of the two, the deterministic system would be in control and that that that gives you, we think, the perfect balance of of the ability to do things like one inference from the LLM, but have all of the legal knowledge and the guardrails in place that mean that the AI can’t do things that everyone’s heard about, like hallucinating things like that, or at least reduce it to the point where it’s a very controlled issue, and that design decision has probably pretty much influenced the entire product throughout, yeah,

Robert Hanna  13:26  

and you know, it’s great that you’ve given it that level of due diligence as well. And, you know, thought, because, you know, a lot of people, when they hear AI and they’re worried about the wild wild west and everything else that’s happening, you know, you’ve really put that central to what you’re providing. And the other key point you’ve mentioned there, where people will read the headline of, obviously, your announcements, obviously, announcements, but there are humans behind this. Yes, it’s but like you say, you’ve got the wizards yourself and Dan, there’s real human strategic thinking at the top level to really produce a high quality product for people that need this. And so you touched on it before, but I want to go deeper into showing off Garfield AI in terms of your document library, because, you know, you have a library of documents to assist legal professionals. So can you give us a bit more of an insight to what actually

Philip Young  14:07  

is available? So pretty much Garfield will will also populate all of the court forms that you might need in a small debt claim, and also drafts correspondence. Will also draft settlement letters, and will handle settlement letters from the other side. So Garfield basically tries to do every sort of document you might reasonably expect to encounter in a small debt claim. From time to time, the court service obviously amend their forms, which means that we then have to just tweak Garfield to amend the form in the same way. But it does try to do the entire universe of all of those documents and also understand the other documents that you don’t have to generate, but you do have to understand. So for example, when you get a judgement, that’s not a document that a user generates, generated by the court, but you still have to be able to understand it. So when those documents come in, that they can be processed as well. So. And also Garfield talks to the the bulk issuing Centre in Northampton. And so Garfield therefore has to be able to sort of exchange data programmatically with that court system. I’m hoping, and I’m on a little crusade of my own, to persuade the government to do this. But I’m hoping that the new OCMC that the government is now got out there for people to use. So this is the newer version of how to bring a debt claim via the web by the government’s portal will be given an API in due course. And I know lots of people are very keen on that. And then Garfield can then seamless integrate with that as well.

Robert Hanna  15:33  

Yeah, and that’s the key, isn’t it? I think the more I always say, when you can remove friction and have more fusion, then you know, you get a lot more adoption. And you know, if you know, if you confuse people, you lose people. And if it’s if it’s tricky people, you know, it’s just very difficult. And I guess that leads nicely to, you know, we’ve talked about the small claims court, but I want to sort of again, just so our listeners really understand this. It’s important stuff, because this is where the puck is going. This is absolutely it’s not turning around. This is the future of legal services, particularly in this space. So Garfield AI is the only AI that enables you to recover invoices up to 10k through the English small claims court. So talk us through how Garfield AI can assist a lawyer with a small claim in the county court, start to finish, but high level, just in terms of so people really understand what this actually doing for them.

Philip Young  16:19  

So yeah, for a law firm. So we also built Garfield to be used by a law firm, because I was really keen that that it could be used both by the creditors directly and also by law firms. So for law firms, they can set up an account in just the same way that a user can, and then they’re able to do two things. They’re able to pursue their own debts if they want. I do say other than debts that are subject to detailed assessment, because we don’t handle that yet, that’s a wholly separate process. Or alternatively, act on behalf of their clients debts, and it’s a sort of white label solution. So it does all the same things, but it assumes that the lawyer wants to put the letters on the lawyers letterhead, rather than on Garfield’s, and that was my assumption. And actually it’s been a little bit challenged in the last few weeks. And I’ll come back to why in a moment. It’s been quite an interesting learning curve for me there. But it also sort of Garfield, for a creditor, would email the documents out and send the documents out, but for a law firm, it assumes a law firm would probably want to do that itself. So in other words, it sort of generally assumes that Garfield sort of sits that Garfield sort of sits locally on on the law firm’s desktop, and external parties don’t know the law firms using Garfield. I mentioned my assumption of being challenged because, I mean, I’ve obviously been in law 25 years, and law firms, let’s be honest, a little bit egotistical about a few things, including, you know, their letterhead. And I just naturally assumed that law firms, excuse me, wouldn’t want, wouldn’t want letters to go out on another, effectively, another law firms letterhead. So I assume they wouldn’t want to be able to use Garfield’s letterhead. But actually, quite a few of our early adopter law firms have said, no, no, that’s quite wrong. I’m wrong about that. They want it to be on Garfield’s letterhead, because they’ve said things to me, like clients, know, if they get a letter from us, we just won’t pursue it, because law firms traditionally don’t tend to pursue their debts. Whereas it comes from you, they think that probably it will be pursued and then they might pay. I mean, that thought would never even occur to me. Okay, fair enough. So we then, we then feel fine, but we just, we’ll just allow law firms, you’ve got to use Garfield ahead as well if they want, yeah.

Robert Hanna  18:23  

And obviously it’s a win for you in terms of extra, you know, letterhead at the top, and making sure it gets the job done as well. I mean,

Philip Young  18:28  

we’re basically agnostic. We don’t care who of law firms or creditors, whoever uses it. Great, if it helps, fantastic. Well, that’s it. And

Robert Hanna  18:35  

to the point that I said in the introduction, access to justice, you know, you know, we talk a lot, and we partner with Clio, obviously the world’s largest legal technology company, and they’re very passionate about Tech for Good and actually reducing that access to justice gap. And that’s why we’re so keen to hold this conversation, principally today, because what you’re doing is brilliant, and it’s helping those plumbers, those electricians, those people out there that really do struggle, for many reasons, to get those invoices paid. So you know, let’s take your mind back then to May 2025, announcement, Garfield AI, became the first SRA regulated legal AI, so it took, I believe, around eight months for the SRA is approval. Can you talk us through the SRA is approval process? If you can concisely? Yeah, trying to, trying

Philip Young  19:18  

to deal with eight months concisely, is a bit of a challenge, isn’t it, for a lawyer, because we’re not known for concise. Not known for considering, but I’ll do, I’ll do the best I can. So yeah, I mean, for the SRA, this was a new thing as well, and they had to fight their way. And they were very thorough, and they were they were really clever and engaged in the way that they approached this, and very, very open minded. So they have a public duty to try to promote access to justice, and that obviously informs their philosophy and their thinking. And the first, the first question they really had to ask themselves was, did they even have the jurisdiction to authorise this? Because at the end of the day, regulators can only act in areas where they’ve been given the jurisdiction to do so. So. The SOA had to look quite closely at whether or not Garfield was doing something that had to be regulated, that felt within the Legal Services Act. And I mean, my view on that is that Parliament, less them, has not helped the regulator. In fact, made the regulator’s life harder than it should be because Parliament never defined a lot of the what’s called the reserve legal activities and conducting litigation is particularly ambiguous, and if you look at case law on this, a lot of judges have struggled with what is and what is not conducting litigation. Fortunately, there was a case about two years ago now where a judge did a pretty thorough job of trying to say what will be and what won’t without trying to be exhaustive, and it was clear from that case that Garfield did enough of the things that it fell well within the right side of the line. So I think the SOA therefore felt comfortable having considered that around its jurisdiction. But I do feel quite sorry for the SOA that there will there will clearly be other products that appear, and some may not be built by lawyers, and then there’ll be all sorts of questions about, is this on the right side of the line or the wrong side of the line, and always in this giant grey area in the middle? And I feel quite sorry for the SRA that they’re going to have to, sort of, they’re going to have to sort of find their way through that world which has been sort of foist upon them. This is basically a pitch, by the way, for the fact that the Legal Services Act does need to be looked at again and reformed. I think that this is getting on a bit, and some of these definitions are very old, and they really need to be looked at again in the new world. But anyway, that aside, that was the jurisdictional precedent was the first thing. And then thereafter, the SOA, without going too much into the detail, wanted to look very much at who was behind Garfield, you know, check out our credentials, where we appropriate people to be involved. Did we have the right skill sets wanted to look at the product? Is it? Was it going to be helpful for access to justice? Is it the sort of thing that that should be allowed and and also, very much the ethical because a lot of ethical questions that I been considering from day one of this so client confidentiality, conflicts of interest, all those sorts of questions that need to be thought through when you build a new product. That wasn’t very concise, but I’ll stop there, and you can ask another question, no, but

Robert Hanna  22:16  

it’s important. And you know, we want to make sure that our listeners understand what you went through. For me when I, when I, when I hear i ai, I think of two words, opportunity and trust. And so, um, being SRA approved, What advantages does that bring to Garfield AI, and what opportunities as an extension of that? Because, you know, still some people, particularly in the legal industry, will, will not be on the boat as of yet?

Philip Young  22:42  

Yeah, well, I mean, the key advantage is, if we weren’t regulated, Garfield couldn’t be released unless, unless I wanted to be prosecuted for quite a serious criminal offence. And I don’t, I don’t have any deciding for that Mark. Yeah, no, no, thanks. So, so, I mean, it was there for sort of, sort of an eliminate threshold issue in that if we hadn’t got regulated, there would be no government in terms of being in terms of being regulated, though. I mean, I think it, it shows a couple of things. First of all, it shows that our that our powers that be in this country are very forward thinking about AI. We know the government’s been talking a lot about it, but also the regulators are very keen on, in a responsible way, seeing how they can allow AI to help people. I think it also shows that we are as a country, we are creative. And I, although I know what I’m doing, I also know lots of other people who are building very interesting things, in law, tech, and I think a lot of very exciting things coming down the track for for everyone in the profession over the next couple of years. I do think, though you’re right, I think the two words I think about our responsibility and accountability, both of which were key topics in my my discussions with the SRA, because obviously, at the end of the day, if they can authorise a law firm. Somebody’s gonna have to be ultimately accountable. That’s a cult, and people have got to be responsible, because you are providing a regulated service to, in my case, businesses, but in most cases the general public,

Robert Hanna  24:11  

yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, I think it’s fantastic that you’re able to get this through. And it doesn’t surprise me going through, listening to the journey, the level of due diligence and thought you put behind this before, actually, you know, making this a reality. And given, obviously your impressive legal background prior, it’s only exciting times ahead, I think for Garfield AI, but you did talk openly a moment ago about challenges, and so I like to get people vulnerable and open, because entrepreneurship is hard, you know, I’m involved in various ventures. And you have a lot of, you know, setbacks. You have a lot of, not a believers. You have all these doubts and so many things. So, um, firstly, how many users have you been able to acquire since inception? And how are you planning to bring this to the to the market? And what challenges do you foresee?

Philip Young  24:56  

So, the so, I mean, I. I had been planning a very quiet, nice, stealth launch over six months. Just keep it low key, set some people on quite a lot of different types of businesses who wanted to give it a go. You know, we had small sole traders all the way up to some big businesses with fully fledged finance functions. We had a couple of law firms and accounting practices, basically a good range and various other professionals. But then, then, then the FT discovered us, and that was the end of that. Yeah, that did it. I mean, last three was it three weeks? My candidates, right? Three or four weeks have been quite a shock to the system in terms of the level of interest. I wasn’t expecting anything like this. Certainly wasn’t expecting to appear on your podcast, so take that off my list. But, yeah, I mean, it’s been, I think the biggest challenge we’ve got at the moment is is calibrating people’s expectations. Because some people come on, they give it a go with a couple of nice, simple claims with, you know, one invoice, couple invoices, and it’s beautiful. And then, like, wow, this thing’s brilliant. And then they jump to the other extreme. We’re thinking, this is an AI God. And then, and then you get people trying to put things on that are claims for 50,000 quid or something. And of course, we’re very quick Garfield, then I say, I’m really sorry we don’t handle claims more than 10,000 pounds. And you know, sometimes you get people who, who’ve got a claim that really isn’t a simple debt claim. It might be 9999 pounds, but they’re trying to put hundreds of documents on all at once, and that’s not the reality of a small debt claim. So it’s very much. So we’ve been thinking a bit about that, and we’re going to slightly tweak our sort of onboarding process so that, so that the expectations are more firmly grounded in what is possible and what is, frankly, unrealistic, which is odd, because when i The 10,000 pound is right at the top of our website, so I wasn’t expecting people to ignore that, but they some people have done but you know, Bless them, I love an optimist and for marketing, for trying, yeah, what else in terms of challenges? Well, my messages have melted down. I am the sort of person. I’m very British and polite and a bit awkward, and I like to reply to everyone who messages me. And I’ve got to the point where I’ve just realised that for quite some time still, if anyone’s listening to me, and I haven’t replied to them, and they’ve written to me, I’m really sorry. But I will get to you. Don’t worry. I’m just really, really sorry. I had to do a chronological order. Another challenge is obviously building the product and continuing to add things to it. Matt is a really interesting challenge, because that’s basically engineering, and that’s something I really enjoy. But I at the moment, I’m not being quite as close to that the last couple of weeks as I wished I was, because I’ve been doing a lot of responding to the media and inquiries and things. So my the team who are awesome have been sort of having all that fun by themselves, a little bit envious of them for that. So those are sort of the things that are on my my plate at the moment, really, today’s

Robert Hanna  27:58  

episode is brought to you by Clio, champions of innovation and legal tech and proud sponsors of some of the most exciting events in the legal calendar. And looking ahead to July the third, Clio is proud once again, to be involved in the great big legal off site, gblo 2025 this one of a kind gathering blends learning, innovation, wellness and community in a refreshingly different format, powered by us, the legally speaking podcast and high risk gblo Is the UK’s ultimate legal leadership getaway, set at ribby Hall village in Lancashire. Over 200 SME law firm leaders will come together for a full day experience designed to challenge, connect and inspire, expect incredible talent, diverse legal voices and thought leaders taking the stage, plus a VIP dinner, live music, golf, spa access, Monster Truck cheerleaders, Titan the eight foot AI powered robot, and hosting it all, the legendary voice of The X Factor. Britain’s Got Talent. Peter Dickson, this isn’t just another legal conference. It’s a movement and your future firm, it starts off site, Cleo will be there, and we’d love to see you there too. Now, back to the show. Thanks for giving such a candid overview. I guess, just to the build of Garfield air, because I know, you know, and I’m see lots of people building in legal tech. How do you go about overcoming certain problems? Is there a sort of process you follow, or is it a case by case basis? Anything you could share to maybe other legal legal entrepreneurs, legal tech entrepreneurs thinking about problems that they’re trying to overcome with their AI

Philip Young  29:28  

businesses. So, and this is a personal view, and it’s not necessarily shared by lots of other people, but I do think if you’re going to build a law tech product, particularly in contentious in the contentious space, so litigation or arbitration, I really think there’s got to be a lawyer leading the an experienced lawyer leading the product development, because we have, we have come across so many edge cases that only an experienced lawyer would know about. And I think, oh, that could happen there that you would never get from just reading the CPR or reading a couple. Couple of books on how to bring a small claim. You need that sort of experience to be able to sort of plan for it and handle it and build it into the architecture of the product. So I think that that is one thing I would say. And so when I when I read, for example, that Y Combinator in America is talking about building all these little tech products just with techie guys, I’m like, That ain’t gonna work guys, you know, this is a nice idea, but you go off and find yourself some lawyers who can lead the product development and have the have the team of a lawyer and a and an engineer working together who manage the whole thing. That’s one point I would make. The second point is find really good people. So, I mean, the success of CY K was driven by the fact we recruited really carefully, and we put candidates through up to three interviews, plus various other assessments, and we therefore at ty k. I mean, okay, I’ve left them three years, but I still hear how they’re doing, and chat to the partners there, because they’re my mates, and they’re doing really well, and it’s because they really are very focused on the quality of their team, and I think it’s the same for for software development. I think you’ve got to really sort of focus on bringing the right people on board. Thirdly, also helps if you know people. Frankly, it’s like life so you know what, not what you know, in some ways, and and the ability to sort of have people who can, you know, give you good advice or challenge you when you’re going down the long Alley is so valuable. Yeah,

Robert Hanna  31:23  

you’re talking my language and all of those points, and I talk my listeners. We fed up with me talking about the power of your network and getting yourself out there and who knows you, and building that reputation, and various ways you can do that, featuring on podcasts, etc, etc. So no, absolutely. And you kind of answered my next question, so I kind of suspected you would say that is, and it was going to be, you know, has your previous city experience really shaped, helped shape the way Garfield AI has been created? And the answer, obviously, is definitively Yes. But is there anything you would bolt

Philip Young  31:51  

on to that? Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting, because Cy k does not do small debt claims. Yes. Claims have got seven figures, up to billions, you know, really big ticket cases. So when I started Garfield, I had to completely re educate myself, because it’d been 25 years since I did a small debt claim. So I went off and I bought a whole bunch of books to remind myself, you know how? So I obviously understand the law everyone under if you’ve been a litigation commercial litigation guy, you understand the law of debt, and you understand contract law and all those sort of things and damages. But I had to go back and get the books out and how you actually run a small debt claim in the process, which is a core, really, of Garfield. What else? What else? Yeah, so I mean, other than that, it was, it was really sort of experience in knowing where something might go and sort of thinking about edge cases, yeah, but I sort of feel in a weird way, the Cy K and Baker McKenzie life was wildly different to my Garfield life. And it’s not just because of tech, but because we’ve gone the utter opposite end of the spectrum in terms of claims. Yeah,

Robert Hanna  32:54  

I totally get that. Putting my legal recruiting hat on, and having done work with some of the top boutiques, like to see why case. Yeah, it’s very, very different in terms of what you’re handling. But I love that the values behind this and why you’ve created this from that sort of spawning of your, you know, your family members sort of having these issues because it’s so needed. You know, if we can get this Tech for Good to work and work properly, it’s brilliant. And I guess a loaded question next, you know, we’ve touched on it. But how do you get the concept of this into the public consciousness and keep it when the majority of people probably don’t know that this type of service exists? And do you think you’re making a market for self service generally? I think

Philip Young  33:34  

AI and AI agents are coming, whether we like it or not. I think it’s inevitable. And the real questions around how to sort of build products that help people and build them so they’re responsible, and the issue of accountability we touched upon earlier. So I think regardless of how Garfield does, this will become a thing over the next sort of five, five years or so, where there’ll be many sort of products that help ordinary people access justice, and that’s a great thing, and lots of people were excited about that. And I, in saying that, I’ve completely forgotten the second half of

Robert Hanna  34:10  

your question. I think it’s the No, it’s absolutely fine, the self service point. You know, do you think you’re making a market for self service generally?

Philip Young  34:17  

Well, as I said, we’re sort of agnostic on whether or not, it’s law firms using us all, or just creditors, and I think it’s horses for courses. Some, some creditors will want to have a human, overseen solution, in which case, brilliant. They’ll go to their law firm. Some will not, and they might try and come to us directly. And I think giving, giving the end user, that sort of option is going to be incredibly useful, and also helps law firms as well, because it means that they can offer a service that hopefully will help them. Because for law firms, I was thinking very much that being able to use a platform like ours means that they can scale much more easily. They don’t have taken a lot more staff if they want to do a lot more small debt claims, they have to worry about the overhead of the. Fixed costs, like offices and things, and it might help to maintain their margins. And because I come from Derbyshire, and a lot of people I knew up there were sort of high street solicitors or country solicitors, I’m very keen to sort of support that world, but who, otherwise, I think they might be slightly left behind, because all the money in AI at the moment is being slammed at all the big firms, and in some cases, being spent by the big firms. And we don’t want to sort of forget that the high street practices are a really important part of the legal profession and provide services to some really important, you know, basically the general public. So that was what I was thinking there. I think in terms of self service, I think there’ll be other products like Garfield that get built. It’s inevitable. I think, I think people will underestimate the technical challenges involved. I mean, I’m obviously very conscious of the technical challenges that we’ve tackled in the last two years, and I think there are lots of other sorts of claims that could be tackled that will be even more complicated to tackle, but people will try, because people are very creative, yeah, and

Robert Hanna  35:58  

innovation never stops. And I think you make a really important point, particularly about the high street, and that high street. And that sort of touched me, as my late grandfather ran a very successful law firm and grew that to multiple offices across Leicestershire. And, yeah, much needed and much respected. So yeah, I love that. It was rich in car solicitors. It was

Philip Young  36:16  

brilliant. Yeah, yeah, my granddad, he was a carpenter, and he worked for a law firm in London called Reeves, and they, I think they, they ended up with a property business on the side that was bigger than their law firm, and so they all ended up running the property business

Robert Hanna  36:29  

instead. There we go. Well, how about that? Yes, so my, my late grandfather, the reason why we set up and do a lot of all of this, this content, actually, is to continue that family legacy and law so, yeah, it’s nice to be neighbouring counties and similar values as well. And obviously you’ve done some tremendous things. So in a recently published the Law Society Gazette article, it says, in depth, world’s first AI law firm targets High Street practices you share, it’ll remove a lot of the lower value, often repetitive administrative work, and we’ll get my words out in each case, that has to be done, but is time intensive and hence costly for the client. It will therefore free up lawyers to focus on the higher level and more valuable work. I think most lawyers will appreciate this. So since you’ve launched, are lawyers appreciating it? And any thoughts or anything you would add to that?

Philip Young  37:17  

Yeah. So so far, the feedback from lawyers who’ve used it is that they they like it. And actually one of the first reactions I had to Garfield was I went along and I showed it to the tech disputes network in London, which is basically a network of solicitors and barristers who specialise in tech disputes, something set up by one of my former partners, Cy K Sam Roberts and and that was at a point that no one even knew this thing was coming. And so I sort of demoed it cold to them, and there was a sort of intake of breath amongst the entire room when I showed them that we could run up a claim for them in literally seconds, just based upon uploading a couple of documents. And I think everyone from that point on has been thinking that, you know, they think of this sort of technology is going to take away a lot of the very time intensive, repetitive, administrative sort of stuff that lawyers have to do but don’t enjoy, and that’s going to have some profound implications for for the profession. But I think on the whole, it’s a plus, because it means you put it another way, no one get went into the law thinking, great, I’m going to spend years doing doc review or due diligence or giant disclosure exercise. Those are the things that particularly junior lawyers do that they they have to almost do as a rite of passage. But actually they don’t enjoy at all, because they want to do the higher level things. You know, thinking about strategy help, you know, managing clients, tactics, you know, formulating a case, putting forward the best legal arguments, those sorts of things. And I think lawyers will spend more of their time in the future doing the good stuff and less doing the bad. Now, there is a sort of an ancillary question there, which is, does that mean that lawyers will become less skilled? And I think not. And the best analogy I can give for you is that humans have always invented tools, and we invent tools to save ourselves effort. And you wouldn’t, if you want to go, and I don’t know, screw a screw into a wall, you can get a screwdriver and a drill, you wouldn’t try and do your fingers. So it’s the same, same, same, same principle. You know, there’s stuff that you that skills that you probably won’t use as much, and you won’t need to, because you’ll be using the higher level skills instead. So I think on the whole it’s a plus, but that’s me, and it’s coming anyway, so we should make it a plus, yeah.

Robert Hanna  39:27  

And absolutely it is a plus. And the wave, as you say, is just continuingly together. And Piers Linney, former Dragons Den investor and lawyer who says the ship has left the harbour when it comes to AI, and there’s no way it’s turning around or coming backwards. So yeah, here’s to that. Okay, so at the CJC National Forum, the deputy head of civil justice highlighted how products like Garfield AI are absolutely at the core of what we can do for access to justice. So how is Garfield AI making justice more accessible to those who are less privileged in the community? Yeah? The

Philip Young  40:00  

view of people like Lord Justice Burse is that products like Garfield, because the judiciary could never endorse any particular product, but their view is that products like Garfield are going to help with access to justice, because what they’re going to do is they’re going to make it possible for people that at the moment, either won’t access a court system because it’s too intimidating, or they try to, but they access it as if against in person, and therefore don’t really get the results that they deserve, because they’re not represented. Have a solution that enables them to come to court with a claim that has been properly prepared. I think one of the attractions of Garfield to the judiciary is that it basically ensures a uniform quality of claim is presented if it gets so far as a trial. And that would then mean, because it’s also incredibly affordable as a product, that a lot of people that would otherwise be litigants in person and cause district judges a lot of time to try and unpack whatever this new thing is, would then be given a good quality case to just sort of deal with and do a lot more swiftly. So it’s two things, really. It’s one, it’s it’s enabling people that otherwise wouldn’t have any access to any sort of legal advice to have access. And secondly, also helps the court system, because it means that cases, on the whole, were prepared with a decent uniform to be of quality, and therefore means that judicial time is not being spent trying to understand what it is that the person in front of you is actually seeking, you know what? What relief are they seeking from the court? Even, even the skeleton arguments that we’ve shown Garth would generate to to members of judiciary get them quite excited, because they’re like, we wouldn’t normally get this. Normally get this in a lot of these claims, and this would save us so much time. And obviously the judiciary and then ask themselves a question of, where is this going to go next? And they could see it would apply to other sorts of claims, and it would also, therefore, hopefully remove litigants in person by giving them some form of support and advice in other sorts of cases, so that that’s why I think the senior judiciary are quite excited by this sort of technology and what it could lead to in terms of, in terms of people that otherwise would be unrepresented or just not access a court, being able to to access a court in an informed way.

Robert Hanna  42:16  

Yeah, no, really, really brilliant answer. And so many net positives there. And you know, absolutely get all of that. And I think, you know, time is also our greatest commodity all around, isn’t it? So I think if we can free up that where possible for good, we’re here for that. Okay, we’ve touched on it, but I want to go a little bit deeper around ethical considerations. Because what ethical considerations do you think law firms and legal teams should be mindful of as they adopt AI tools.

Philip Young  42:43  

So it depends a bit upon what the tool is and that they are planning to adopt. Some tools are literally just going to sit silently within the law firm. I they won’t sort of interface with the outside world, in which case they’re always going to be overseen by a human, a lawyer, in which case, I don’t see that as being any different than using Word or Excel or any other tool. In that the lawyer is is using it and is checking the work. As it happens, something like Garfield poses an extra challenge, which is one of the reasons why we had to think about this very carefully. Had a long dialogue with the SOA, because whilst at the beginning, I’m being very cautious, typically cautious, or when I’m checking all the documents running out the door, you know, I’m moving, I’m going to move, over time, to a sampling based process, and so I won’t be checking every single document. There won’t be any need, because we’ll be confident that the quality is exactly where I want it to be. And that obviously creates interesting challenges and issues, and then we’re having to focus, very much, of course, upon topics such as, and we talked about this a bit before, such as accountability, ensuring quality control, because you can do that with technology to an extent protecting client confidentiality and things like conflicts of interest. And what I’ve tried to do in building Garfield with Dan and the guys is I’ve tried to reduce the scope for ethical issues. So for starters, I said one of our architectural decisions was we’re not gonna have a client bank account, client bank account. Client bank accounts are a big area of risk for law firms, and we all know the reasons why. And I said, right, we just won’t have one. You don’t have to have one as a law firm. And if that is when they pay the creditor, they won’t send the money for us or just pay directly, which actually our users prefer, because it means there’s not a middle guy in the middle. So we’re disintermediated, and that that that that instantly reduced the big area of risk and a potential series of sort of dilemmas for us, because if you’ve got a client bank account, then you’d have to be automating that as well. And how confident Could you be in that? Another big architectural decision we took was. To reduce and mitigate the scope for conflicts of interest. We decided we were only able to do one side of a deck claim. We’re only ever going to be claimant side we we do actually have the technology to do defendant side cases as well. Because one of the surprising things I’ve discovered in building a big software product is that most of your time is not building the product. Most of your time is building the massive infrastructure around it to test it and maintain it. And so in order to to test a claimant side, small debt claim product, you have to build the defendant side so that you can run vast quantities of dummy of realistic dummy defences and all that sort of stuff through the system to test it automatically, on top of the manual testing that we do as well. So we could, we could package up a defendant side product to sell that, but we’re not going to do that, because that raises all sorts of interesting conflicts of issues and ethical issues and issues around the confidentiality of one client’s information. And, you know, does it then have to be shared with another client, all those sorts of things that come with with potential conflicts. A third issue is, is confidentiality generally not not in just in the conflict or interest sense, but just in the general sense. And we thought very carefully about that and how we built logical separation between all of the all of the clients, so there is no prospect whatsoever that one clients information could ever find its way into another client. And that’s something with some AI products, I think some people have to think about very carefully. Think if they’re doing the particularly if they’re doing things like training models, where you’d have to be very careful that any information you put into it and became part of the weight of the model didn’t somehow come out of it again to another client. So there’s all those sorts of challenges, and then there’s a really interesting question about people’s understanding of what they’re getting. So we’ve been very careful, by agreement with the SOA that in our letters, Garfield explains what it is. You know, it’s a, we might be a law firm, but we’re an AI product in a law firm. And there’s, you know, a page on our website that people get a letter they get directed to that explain what Garfield is and roughly how it works. And please don’t ignore it. This is not a joke, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. That sort of thing. And those are, I think, very important considerations too, because people should know what they’re dealing with. So there’s quite a lot of lot of topics there that I think other AI products will interface with, to some extent or not. And of course, some people will be even more ambitious and try and do, try and do things that go another step or two steps further, and they will have even more interesting, sort of ethical topics to consider, as

Robert Hanna  47:28  

I always say, new level, new devil. And you make so many good points there, and you know, a couple of things you mentioned, you’d never build the defendant side. But do you assume someone else will?

Philip Young  47:38  

Yeah, I imagine at some point there’ll be an arms race and the defendant side product, and then Garfield will be will be getting letters from some AI that say, Hello, I’m defendant. That’s going to be very interesting. It did prove to be a lot more challenging, even than building the claimant side product. But it also means that we have basically an entirely synthetic county court system that’s just sat in code on our systems, which I think that is an amazing concept. Yeah, when we when we showed this to the justice select committee in Parliament a few months back, I think they were a bit shocked by it, because they just had a lot of evidence about how the county court modernization programme hasn’t quite gone the way one hoped, and a lot of money has been spent, and it’s not quite where it should be. And then we basically show them this highly synthetic county court system on our computers. And they were like, Okay, how come we don’t have

Robert Hanna  48:32  

that? Very true, very true. Well, it is great, isn’t it, what you’ve been been doing. And that kind of brings me to talk about uniqueness, because other than what I assume is now, there’s ability for 24/7 for folks to be able to sort of carry out their small claims, which is brilliant. What makes Garfield AI a unique, so unique, if you like, in comparison to other AI platforms out there?

Philip Young  48:56  

So I think, I think there’s a couple of things. First of all, we’re the first law firm that is AI only so that that is in itself unique, and that’s what’s really spurred all the media interest. And I wasn’t really expecting the media to be as interested in that as everyone seems to be. Secondly, I think we’re the first AI that can properly conduct litigation. So there was somebody in America who set up a business called Do Not Pay, who tried, yeah, I watched his travails with with some interest from across the Atlantic, because I think in the end, he got threatened by a whole bunch of attorney generals in different states for contempt, and that’s what, he wasn’t a lawyer. And that goes back to my point about lawyers have got to build these products, because lawyers understand all the ethical rules and the professional obligations, all that sort of stuff. Thirdly, thirdly, it’s sort of the, the first, the first, I think, really scalable way of doing, doing mitigation. It’s in technologically wise, because previously, there’s always been humans in the loop somewhere. That means your speed is limited. To your humans. And I suppose it goes to your point about, you know, if you want to wake up at two o’clock, at two o’clock in the morning and issue a letter for action, then you’d have had to have hoped that somebody was up at two o’clock to check on it. And so now we’ve moved to a world where, where it’s much more, where that sort of exercise that isn’t a closed problem space is much more scalable.

Robert Hanna  50:21  

Yeah, no. And again, to that access to justice point as well. You know, if someone’s sort of awake at night and they have this burning desire, yeah, no, absolutely okay about it. But

Philip Young  50:32  

some people have done that, you know, people who popped up at three in the morning and decided that this is the time that they got to use gas like, well, what cannot sleep?

Robert Hanna  50:41  

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But I think it’s great that it’s now there. That’s the main thing. Okay, future plans. The future is tomorrow, isn’t it? You know, the world we’re living in now, it’s quite hard to predict. You know, in so many years time, what do you expect? X, so I’ll just keep it as broad future. And how have you defined that? But what are the future plans for Garfield AI. And you know, what can people get excited or expect from you?

Philip Young  51:04  

So, I mean, I’m, because I’m a typically cautious lawyer. I’m focusing, at the moment, in these early days, in just trying to refine the product as much as possible. So we’re, we’re listening very much to all of early adopters, and a lot of them have been brilliant in terms of sort of saying, We love this. Could this thing be added? Maybe this thing isn’t quite the way I’d like it, and we really want early adopters to give us feedback, and we’re going to keep refining it so it’s sort of we obviously can’t take into account everyone’s desires, because there’s always some people that want something that’s really niche and it’s not really worth building it. But we’re trying as much as possible to take into account what everyone says, and also, as I say, refine it, so that people were really clear about their expectations, so they don’t think we can do a claim for 150,000 quid or something like that. As we, as we sort of get past that phase, I think we will probably build a few extra products. We’ll probably sort of wait. So we’re looking very much at doing loan agreements, simple loan agreements, less than 10,000 pounds. And we’ve been approached by people that would like us to do that. And we’ll probably look at other areas that are closely analogous. But at the moment, I can’t really see much beyond the next three or four months worth of sort of, you know, scaling it to the point where it’s, it’s, it’s, sort of users have got everything they really want with the product. Yeah, and

Robert Hanna  52:23  

that’s such a really golden piece of advice for anybody listening to be exceptionally customer centric and accept that feedback, or hear that feedback and make informed decisions on what people actually want. And I think it’s brilliant that you’re leading by example and doing that, and then educating and inform them what it can and it can’t do, and making sure expectations are managed. That’s just absolutely brilliant. And again, leads me nicely before we close to some last pearls of wisdom for advice. And I did ask a lot of members of ours, our community, questions they would like to ask you, knowing that you’re coming onto the show. And I want to kind of dedicate these to the next generation of sort of aspiring young solicitors. So one lady asked, What advice would you give to young solicitors entering a profession that could look radically different in 10 years time, particularly in a world where platforms like Garfield AI are transforming how legal information is accessed, analysed and applied? There is a follow up question to that, but I’ll leave you with that one for now, because that’s already a rich one

Philip Young  53:21  

in itself. Yeah. I think, I think fundamentally, lawyering will never change. We’re certainly in a contentious world. We are all about helping people navigate a process to get to a good outcome. And I suppose that also applies to transactional lawyers too, but that’s not really my world, and I think that will never change. And I think what does change is the tools you use to get there, and the sort of your day to day job and its complexion. And we’ve talked a bit already about how the day to day job is going to be on the whole, higher level, more rewarding sort of skills. I think if I was a young lawyer today, I’d be totally keeping up with technological development. I would be trialling products as they come out. And I would also be thinking a bit about about other skills because I spoken, I spoke, for example, at the technology construction courts conference a few months ago about the fact that I think that lawyers, traditionally, we have, we’ve not trained on other skills that we should have been trained on. So, for example, I would have benefited enormous. Benefited enormously by having experience of psychology, having some proper psychology training. And in fact, somebody said to me recently, well, maybe learning a bit about therapy would be good too with some clients. And I think, actually, you know, that’s semi facetious, but semi correct. I think that would be those sort of skills would be useful. And I think I think sort of thinking about that and working a bit more on the EQ as well as the IQ, would be a really good skill for junior lawyers to focus on such

Robert Hanna  54:46  

good advice. And again, I talk very openly about that EQ point. It’s so so so important. And this leads on to the follow up part of that question that the young lady asked in terms of, how should they prepare to remain relevant, ethical and. And impactful in a legal landscape where much of the routine cognitive work is managed by machines.

Philip Young  55:05  

Gosh, that’s a big question, isn’t it? Well, remaining ethical is the easy bit. Just remain ethical. Everyone knows what the rules are. Everyone also knows when you step over them, so don’t step over them. It’s never worth it. And in terms of impactful, I think, I think I think it comes back to what I just said, which is, you’ve just got to stay up to date with technological development. You’ve got to think about how you can broaden your skills in a way that would make you more marketable as a person within your firm or elsewhere, and also what keeps you fulfilled and makes you happy. Because I think one thing that junior lawyers often, sort of, sometimes, sometimes not often, sometimes lose track of is that there’s a journey to a career in law. And when you were Junior, you’re learning all about the law and about process, substantive law, skills like how to manage clients, how to run a case, and you’re a mid level person, you’re learning about how to supervise them, or junior lawyers and how to sort of take higher level decisions. And then when you’re a senior lawyer, you’re, sort of, you’re aspiring to partnership, you’re running big cases by yourself, those sorts of skills managing client relationships. And I think what will happen is that that will still remain broadly the same, but a lot of the actual day to day skills will just change, and you’ll be pushed up the lander quicker, because you’ll be moving towards the higher level skills much quicker than certainly in my day, we were,

Robert Hanna  56:25  

yeah, and I always talk about building your own being the king and queen of your own castle when it comes to your career in the sense of each move you do or experience as a building block. And you layer that with a career move. And like you say, You may then get it. You may take that promotional move to don’t manage people, or you may take that step up to be leading on cases, or be getting more clients, whatever it is. And I think that mirrors exactly what you’re saying there. And I think it’s so true. And I guess a final question, then more on the going to the AI entrepreneur side of things. Now, what advice would you give someone looking to build their own legal AI platform?

Philip Young  56:56  

Ooh, that’s a good question. I think the first thing is, is, well, first think about your product. And I have spoken to quite a few youngsters in the last, particularly in the last sort of month, for reasons you can imagine this question. And I the first thing I’ve asked them is, I’m very product orientated. I said, Well, what do you want to build? And why? You know? What is it that you’re passionate about. And some people absolutely know, and they will tell you instantly. And some people like, Oh, something in law, something to help people. I’m like, well, that’s you’ve got to think about what you’re going to build. You’ve got to think about what you’re going to build. You’ve got to think about who would like to buy it to make sure that there is actually a market for this thing, and it’s not all pie in the sky. And then you got to think about how you’re going to build it and who’s going to build it with. And I think those are sort of the core questions, and I think it’s best to start with where there is a problem and there’s clearly demand. Otherwise, you’re potentially doing that thing that you hear about with tech guys, where they spend a lot of time and effort, they build an MVP and then literally no one signs up. That’d be bad.

Robert Hanna  57:59  

Find that problems, where attention goes, money flows, all of that good stuff. Absolutely, believe it, this has been a master class, Philip. I enjoyed it even more than I thought I was going to. And it’s amazing how we’ve blasted through nearly an hour with you on the show so and if our listeners, I’m sure they do, will want to know more about your career, or indeed, Garfield AI, where can they go to find out more? Feel free to share any websites, any social media handles. We’ll also include them in this very special episode. Special episode for you, too. Thank

Philip Young  58:24  

you. If you want to find out more about Garfield, then our website is the place to go, www dot Garfield, dot law, and we’re going to revamp it at some point in the next few weeks or months. Depends on how busy we make Pablo in the meantime. So you might find there’s more materials there to look at, and there’ll be more videos and things. And I don’t think, frankly, I’m just, I’m very modest and boring, so probably been overexposed now, frankly, after

Robert Hanna  58:52  

the last few weeks. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, I think, yeah, definitely. Folks go and check out Garfield AI online, and it just leads me to say, thank you ever so much. Once again, Philip, it’s been absolutely an absolute pleasure having you on the show. So from all of us on the legally speaking podcast, sponsored by clear, wishing you lots of continued success with indeed, Garfield AI and future pursuits. But for now, 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 dot legally speaking podcast.com, for the link to join our community there, over and out.