LegalTechTalk 2026: The Rise of the Legal Tech Creator – Holly Cope – E04

You can hear Rob and Hollydiscussing:

Connect with Holly Cope here: 

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/holly-cope-ai-strategy

Transcript

Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast, sponsored by Clio, recording live here at Legal Tech Talk 2026 in London. Joining me now is a dear friend and special guest, returning guest to the show. Please kindly introduce yourself, name, title, and organization and show. Woohoo! I’m very excited to be here. ⁓ my name is Holly Cope. I have a podcast called More Than a Lawyer, which Rob has been also a special guest on, and his episode is absolutely epic. ⁓ and just an okay there.

Yeah.

And I also do AI training and audits for legal teams and law firms. In addition, I’ve literally started that business like a month ago. Yeah. ⁓ FYI. But yeah, that’s basically what I do. And you’ve just been doing such great educational work in the world of the legal tech community for for so long now and ranked as number one and just yeah, just a great friend and great collaborator and doing amazing work in this space. ⁓ this year’s theme of Legal Tech Talk has been a lot around transformation. So, in your view, what has been the biggest

shift in the legal industry right now that legal leaders can no longer afford to ignore. ⁓ my gosh. Rob, you kill me every year, man. And you you you’re at the forefront of this stuff, having the conversations and seeing it. So what what what did you what shift are you seeing that you think people really need to pay attention to before it escapes them?

think the interesting conversations that I’ve been having this year which are different from the ones I was having last year so last year it was a lot about okay what tools can we use ⁓ what can we adopt and this year it’s about what is our AI strategy gonna be. Right. And the interesting thing is I ⁓ moderated a private round table so it was like heads of legal for like huge companies and and innovation heads for large law firms.

And it was absolutely fascinating listening to them because they were saying that basically they can’t think like three or five years a ahead. They have to think

They can’t even really think twelve months ahead because it’s kind of tricky. The tools that they’re using now are not necessarily the tools that they’re gonna be using in two years’ time. ⁓ so I think it’s about it’s about strategy and and thinking what is that strategy. And another thing that comes kind of under that is the return on investment. Yeah. I think people are thinking more about what is the return on investment gonna be in implementing that AI, whereas last year it was like

What can we do? ⁓ let’s do it now, like let’s work as fast as possible, but then now now they’re like sitting back thinking, right, what is our ROI gonna be on this? And again, part of the conversation that I moderated, they were saying in actual facts, we we cannot even quantify an ROI because ⁓ I think the key thing is that monetarily it’s it’s hard to it’s hard to come up with because things are happening so rapidly and and fast and stuff. ⁓ so th there are

⁓ All they can just look at is how many people are adopting, how many team members are actually applying this AI, and that’s our that’s our return on investment for now, but that it’s not even really a metric as such, but anyway, it’s it’s super interesting, this is what I’m hearing. Yeah, like you say, there has been a real shift over the the 12 months from what we were talking about then to where the focus is is now. In terms of yourself, what’s a problem or a challenge in the legal industry that you’re most passionate about solving and why should people care?

Yeah, yeah. I think something that’s

It’s not even frustrating to me to be honest. It’s just more of an education factor is that people are like, yeah. Most people ⁓ I speak to are still like, yeah, ⁓ AI isn’t trustworthy. It it hallucinates, it makes things up and I’m like Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you have to ask it the right questions, you know. Yeah. And also I know we can’t avoid these hallucinations and things, but ⁓ not not a hundred percent anyway, but it’s about

understanding the mindset of the AI. And I think that’s what people are gonna have to learn about now. How is the AI how does the AI function and work? What is it programmed to be like? And then let’s let’s actually use it and take its strengths as a part as opposed to being like, it’s no good, it’s not doing this. So that’s a challenge I guess. And it’s making that investment and time to learn it to improve, to like you say, putting the right inputs, understanding and a whole mindset shift of rather than just being it hallucinates and looking at the problem

It’s actually like that we could there could be loads of opportunities here if you really do invest that time and get the best out of it. ⁓ we’re talking a lot about tech, we’re Legal Tech Talk, you’ve obviously been a referring media partner, done lots of great content, loads of great conversations, and that’s human, right? That’s human connection. So when we look at technology, automation, innovation, but if we get this right, what will be the real human impact? How is this going to improve the overall life of lawyers, legal clients, and ultimately society? my gosh, this is the million dollar question, isn’t it?

It was gonna happen. I think it’s changing our lives massively in more of a way than people actually realise. Yeah. I think the more that I learn about AI, the more conversations I have, the more I’m like, my goodness, I don’t think people know what’s coming. Yeah. it’s huge. And I mean, how is it gonna impact us? ⁓

Don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I think the obvious answer is to say, ⁓ it’s gonna make us more efficient, it’s gonna make us work better and be more human. But I think yeah, that’ll probab that’ll probably happen. But honestly, I really, really don’t know. ⁓ I think there’s controversial, I think there’s probably gonna be less lawyers in the future. I think we need to start

pivoting lawyers need to start thinking like for example I had a conversation with ⁓ with a GC today and he’s looking for a new role and I said to him have you thought about actually specializing in being a GC for a legal tech company? And he went, No, it’s not occurred to me. And I’m like

People need to start thinking a little bit outside the box and think where is the market going? Yeah, where there’s gonna be the market. Let’s let’s sp let’s specialise, let’s let’s pivot. So this is what I think people need to start doing. Okay, action question now. Hold that thought. You’ve got the attention of every law firm leader, general counsel, legal professional, legal ops person, listening, watching this podcast right now. What’s one action they should take in the next 90 days to better prepare for the future? One action. Whoa.

Okay, right. I’ve got no doubts about this because it it changed my life and I’m not even in, you know, in the I’m not even a lawyer. But if you could take one thing that you do in your work, your day-to-day work and think, I’m gonna focus on that thing, it could be I need to learn how to manage my emails, I need to learn how to

I don’t know. Let me think. Write a LinkedIn post better. Yeah. One thing and then think and then learn how AI can solve that thing for you. And just focus on one thing and just just play around with it. I think that could be the best thing to do because it snowballs from there. Then you start learning how to prompt. You start learning how to do loads of different things. You start learning how how it might hallucinate. You start learning how what to actually feed it. I think that’s what I did. I thought I’m gonna solve one problem in my business.

Using AI, I’m not gonna overwhelm myself thinking I’m gonna have to do X, Y, and Z and learn loads of different things. I’m gonna solve one problem and that’s when it snowballed for me because I saw because I thought, wow, this is incredible, this is what it does. I’ve solved this one problem, right? The next one. And you you build up that curiosity and that excitement from doing that one thing. I say that’s what would transform in 90 days somebody’s ⁓ life for sure. And it compounds, doesn’t it? That one thing over time. Okay. ⁓ if listeners want to know more about you.

We’ll come to that in a moment, but I want to know one mindset, one behaviour or skill you would encourage the leaders of tomorrow to double down on. What would it be and what would it that what’s going to help them separate from the others? One skill, mindset, or behaviour. Okay, so like what one of those things. Yeah, what would it be that’s going to separate them as a leader of the future versus everyone else? Whoa, okay, right. I’m getting this from my panel conversation that I had yesterday.

⁓ which was about this similar topic, what is gonna separate the lead leaders from the laggards. That was the title. It was fantastic. ⁓ And I think the mindset sh the mindset that you need to have is ⁓

It’s kind of hard to like summarise but basically don’t overwhelm yourself with are we behind? ⁓ how do we catch up?

in terms of like AI and adoption and everything like this. Think about what can we do to help our people in the next, let’s say, six months. How can we get them on board, start with the humans first, get them into AI, get them curious, get them experimenting and just go step by step. I think that’s that’s the mindset as opposed to thinking, my gosh, what are we gonna do in a year’s time? What are we gonna do in two years time? Just just look at look at today, look at tomorrow, look at the next six months and go start

That’s the mindset that people need to have. Don’t get this shiny, what’s it, shiny penny? Yeah, shiny objects in doing and try and chase everything. And I think you’re right. I think you want to have ⁓ imperfect action over perfect inaction, right? Actually start trying to look at things and and move forward and not get, yeah, in comparison of Thief of Joy, all of that good stuff. Couldn’t agree more. ⁓ this has been a blast. It’s always fun having you on the League of Speaking podcast. We love having you as a returning guest. If folks have been living under a rock and don’t know where to find you, please tell them where they can find you. Shout out your show.

So shout out the stuff you’re working on, any websites, any social media handles. We’ll also show this episode for too.

Thanks Rob, you’re absolutely hilarious. And you know, you know the funniest thing is you’re more funny like off off camera, off podcast. You’re even funnier. I love it. Paid her to say that bit. So thank you so much for having me on. As as always, honestly, it’s so such fun, something I look forward to every year. So thank you so much. ⁓ people can find me. The best place to find me is literally LinkedIn. It’s yeah, as always, it’s where I hang out. ⁓ I don’t

Hangout

anywhere else. There we go. So follow Holly on LinkedIn there. Thanks so much for joining me from all of us here, recording live at LegalTechTalk 2026, over and out.