Legally On the Move: Careers, Tech & Insights from Dubai – Jeremy Small – E06

You can hear Rob and Jeremy discussing:

You can hear Rob and Jeremy discussing:

–  Dubai as a Dynamic and Growing Legal Market

– UAE adoption of Legal Tech and the Evolution of its Use

– Shifting Recruitment Trends, With Increased Investment for In-House Legal Teams and Tech-Savvy Lawyers.

– Legal Tech Companies Facing Global Scaling Challenges and How Jameson Legal Supports Them

– Jeremy’s Future Visions of Innovations and Opportunities for Lawyers on a Worldwide Scale

Connect with Jeremy here – https://uk.linkedin.com/in/jeremysmall

Transcript

Robert Hanna  0:00  

Welcome to legally on the move, careers, tech and insights from Dubai. In this exclusive mini series of the legally speaking podcast, we’re taking you to the heart of Dubai, a global hub for legal innovation, cutting edge technology and transformative career opportunities. Here’s what you’ll gain, career inspiration, unlock the secrets to thriving in Dubai’s dynamic legal market Tech Trends. Dive into how AI blockchain and legal tech are reshaping the industry diversity and leadership here from Trailblazers driving inclusivity and innovation in the UAE and global perspectives, explore how Dubai’s unique blend of tradition and ambition is creating a thriving legal ecosystem recorded in iconic locations. These episodes bring you the energy and insights of one of the world’s most exciting legal hubs. Don’t just listen. Experience the future of law. Ready to move forward with us. Let’s go. So welcome to legally speaking podcast, name, title and organisation.

Jeremy Small  0:57  

Thank you so much, Rob. I try and remember that it’s Jeremy small, and I’m the CEO of James illegal. You

Robert Hanna  1:04  

absolutely are. I’m one of the kindest men I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with. So it’s a real pleasure to be doing this on a yacht that you put on for us this afternoon here in Dubai. We’re very gracious to you open the door to legally speaking podcast. But let’s talk about JLT connect and the Dubai legal market generally. What makes Dubai such a key market in terms of legal tech, and what can attendees take from your events that you’ve been putting on? Taking it back a bit, I’ve been working in the Middle East market for about 20 years. Obviously, I was very young when I first came out here,

Jeremy Small  1:38  

and I’ve always found this market just to be a really interesting market, because it’s growing. It’s energetic. It’s sort of a young market. There’s a lot of opportunity in emerging markets, as I see it. So firstly, in terms of the recruitment side, it’s been a great market for Jameson eagle and myself, recruiting lawyers into the region and around the region, and that’s just got bigger and bigger all the time. And then I guess, as a natural extension of that, when legal tech started to grow, it was going to come to the Middle East, and this is a market which I was interested in, sort of working in on legal tech as well, really,

Robert Hanna  2:19  

yeah. And you are also, you know, you started in legal career yourself as well. So I want to talk a little bit about the evolution of legal tech from probably what you started way back then to today. So how has legal tech changed the way law firms operate, and what trends do you see shaping the future? And I challenge you not to say, AI and the answer,

Jeremy Small  2:37  

promise I won’t. Otherwise, yeah, I’ll have to have to pay your fine, funnily enough. So when I started as a lawyer, I worked for a shipping law firm. So it’s quite out. We’re on a boat today, and in my first year, we were we had email, but we weren’t allowed to do our own emails. We essentially had to use a Dictaphone record emails, and then our pas would would send them out. So it was, it was a ridiculous process to where and then leaping forwards to to where we are today. When I was a young lawyer, we didn’t really have what was known as legal tech. I remember working, actually as a paralegal and working in tobacco litigation. There was 100 paralegals working together in a fairly grimy room in the middle of London, and we had to pick up the physical files, go through them with a Dictaphone, pass them to the secretaries, you know. And now you’d probably be doing the same thing with maybe two people running, running the same size of project in terms of the growth of legal tech. I think it started with, sort of discovery was really the most successful one, and that really sort of brought it to the attention of the mainstream, and then over more recent years, I mean, I kind of fell into legal recruitment. About five years ago, I was approached by a legal tech company, actually out here in the Middle East that wanted to leverage the relationships that I had to try and get more warm introductions to potential clients, and I didn’t know anything about legal Tech, I was still focused very much on recruitment, but just dip my toe in the water and managed to get a lot of demos for this particular client, and they were quite happy with it. And what I realised was the markets changed. Adoption of legal tech is happening, or at least there’s a lot of interest in it, and maybe we need to start pivoting and covering that as well. Yeah, and I think

Robert Hanna  4:30  

you’ve done a tremendous job. It has to be said, Let’s talk more than careers then and building them in, particularly this digital age. What with James legal you’ve got a huge global reach, and I’ve seen that just being out here, you know, the events you’ve been putting out, the people. You know, it’s fantastic. And I know there’s a lot of work that goes into that, but how are recruitment trends shifting, and what skills do lawyers need to have to stay competitive, given we are going through this tech revolution? Another

Jeremy Small  4:56  

great question, I think it’s still early days in the adoption. Of legal Tech, I would have said, If you’d asked me this question sort of 18 months ago, I would have said, what we’re seeing is a lot of law firms and in house teams starting to adopt certain types of legal tech, clms, practice management systems, things like that. But it’s a very slow process with law firms and in house teams, probably a bit quicker with in house teams, but it’s hard for them to get the budgets. It’s hard for them to get buy in from their organisations. I think, with generative things that have come in over the last particularly the last 12 months, things have exploded. It’s now we need something. We need to invest in this. We need to see what’s out there. And I think that is going to drive the future from now on, though we’ve crossed that, that that Rubicon and in a way, and it’s more about what tech people have than whether they whether they have it at all. Yeah, and knowing,

Robert Hanna  5:57  

like you say, how to use what you’ve existing got before you go out shopping, but things, again, that are not fully adopted within the firm. So let’s talk about bridging that sort of legal and tech world then, because, you know, Jameson legal tech supports legal tech companies in scaling globally. What’s the biggest challenge they face, and how can you help them succeed? We’re an

Jeremy Small  6:17  

interesting point really, in terms of the history of legal careers. Yeah, lawyers have been doing the same thing for a long time, almost as long as I’ve been around. And we’re going through a bit of a revolution. But I don’t think everyone’s fully aware of that, yeah? And we certainly haven’t sort of fully seen the effects of that, yeah? And I think we’re seeing some fear in that for established players, you know whether they have to change their models, whether they have to change their hiring strategies. So I don’t think we’re there yet, but what we’re seeing, I would say, is we’re seeing, certainly more investment in in house legal teams. I saw a statistic recently from someone that showed that the growth of in house legal hiring is six times that of law firms. So the trend is for companies, and not only big companies, to have an internal legal resource, and for that resource probably to be growing, there’s a lot of pressure on that resource, though, there are huge demands, and so actually, that is driving the take up of tech, certainly for in house teams, because they can see the immediate return on investment of that. Yeah, law firms, I would say the big firms are investing a lot into legal tech, and that is changing their hiring strategies as well. There’s less hiring of junior lawyers, and now, I think, more focus on tech, however, weirdly, we’ve still seen salaries rising at the NQ level. So for quality, people are willing to pay a lot of money for it, but there’s less opportunity, I would say, for people to enter the profession at a young level, and also fear about, how are they going to build a career and build their skills when tech could be taking over some of that work, if you like?

Robert Hanna  8:13  

Yeah. And I guess that leads to, I always try and put a positive spin on things. You know, what excites you most in terms of the future of legal innovation, in terms of the intersection of legal tech, I’ll say AI, and indeed, recruitment. You know, where are the biggest opportunities? You think, within the legal

Jeremy Small  8:29  

industry, I actually think there are loads of opportunities in a technologically advanced sort of legal environment. When I was a lawyer. You know, it was a very linear profession. In law firms, you work there, you might become a partner, or you might, you might leave and do a go in house, or do something like that. When I left the professional I was very young lawyer, but I had no idea what I was going to do. I genuinely had no idea what my skill set was going to be used for. Now, lawyers can take number of very different parts, even without technology going into being a consultant, working part time. And actually, technology really helps that, because you can work remotely, or you can you can use tech to be able to, you know, work in a different way. Then you’ve also got all the different roles that are being created by technology, working in legal ops, working in legal innovation, these roles just weren’t around. You know, when I was a young lawyer, you can also work for a legal tech company. You know, as a lawyer, you can retrain, and your legal skill set is useful in order to help build the tools for legal tech. So although the world is changing, I actually think it’s creating a lot of interesting opportunities for young people and young lawyers

Robert Hanna  9:48  

to look at, yeah, and I echo that, you know, I think back traditionally to like my grandfather and people who would work at his firm, they’d stay train with the firm, stay there, qualified, take their final salary pension way back then. But now there are more opportunities. You can flip from lawyer to maybe a legal tech or go into discovery or whatever it might be. So I think it’s a really exciting time, and it’s been really exciting finally making this interview happen in a very iconic setting, on a yacht that you’ve kindly put on for us today. This is not how I normally roll. Yeah, this is just the humble day. But if people want to know more about Jamieson legal or yourself. What’s the best place for people to go? Feel free chat on your websites. Any social media handles, we’ll also share them in this episode as

Jeremy Small  10:28  

well. Yeah, thanks. I mean, I’m, I’m one of those people that’s, I shouldn’t say this probably, but always very open to people just reaching out. Reach out via LinkedIn, probably the best way. And if I can’t help, which I probably won’t be able to I know good people that can help. Also, if you want to look at, you know opportunities, go to jamesonlegal.com or Jameson legaltech.com and reach out to any of the team genuinely. You know, we’re not gonna we don’t bite. We’re generally quite friendly and happy to help. Fantastic. Well,

Robert Hanna  10:59  

look, it’s been really good having you on the show. Thanks sharing your insights with us. Hopefully we’ll do some more fun collaborations in the future. But for now, for more of us on the legal speed podcast over and out, thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of our legally on the move from Dubai series. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, please take a moment to rate and review the show on your favourite podcast platform. It really helps us out. And if you want to connect with us, directly, join our vibrant, legally speaking club community on Discord, or visit our official website, legally speaking podcast.com. For more updates and ways to get involved. Stay tuned. We’ll see you again soon. Over and out.