LegalTechTalk Uncovered Ep 2 – Lucie Cruz​

Transcript

Robert Hanna: Welcome to the Legally Speaking Podcast, LegalTechTalk Uncovered mini-series powered by Clio. Please introduce yourself. 

Lucie Cruz: Hi, I’m Lucie Cruz. I’m a senior reporter at The Lawyer covering tech and AI.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, and you do a wonderful job. You know, I’ve been a big fan of yours, and we’ve known each other in the online world for a long time, but it’s nice to do this in person at this conference in real life. But how are you finding it?

Lucie Cruz: It’s amazing. The highlight so far is that I’m currently sat with the Legally Speaking Podcast baseball cap on my head, on baseball cap.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, and people will see photos of this on the socials at some point. And I just say, I think it absolutely suits you.

Lucie Cruz: I suit a hat. I’m rocking it.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, I think we’re going to have to get them all for The Lawyer. It seems to work very well. It’s like molded your head nicely.Yeah, it’s perfect, actually.

Lucie Cruz: Thank you.

Robert Hanna: I’m gutted we didn’t get you to do the modeling on the website, actually, but the way it fits, it looks good.

Lucie Cruz: It’s never too late.

Robert Hanna: It’s never too late. When we do season nine release, we can introduce you on to that. Okay, can you describe what you’re focusing on at the moment?

Lucie Cruz: At the moment, I’m focusing on the different challenges around tech and AI for both law firms and in-house counsel, and they are so widespread that it’s almost hard to know where to focus. So at the moment, I’m getting a full lay of the land, which is really why I’m here. Booth hopping, talk hopping, it’s sort of a great place to be able to do that.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, and you’re a wonderful networker and community person as well. And I know you’ve been at a number of other events, and I think it’s great that you’re putting yourself out there. You know, I love what you’re doing. I think your reporting is fantastic as well. What are, you know, with all of these things that are happening, people are trying to disrupt, people are trying to innovate in legal, people are trying to do progressive things. What are some of the challenges you’ve seen in the legal sector? And, you know, how are you or people that you know within the organizations going about addressing these specifically? Any examples you would give?

Lucie Cruz: It’s a tough one, right? Because I think generally the way people see it outside of the industry is that legal has been slow to adapt to the whole technology wave. And now that GenAI has come about, it’s having to go a lot quicker. So it’s interesting to see. And I think in the future, how law firms are dealing with that, like, are they adapting quickly? Which ones are going to make or break in this sort of situation?

Robert Hanna: Yeah. 

Lucie Cruz: I think the biggest challenge is how you plug in data in things that definitely need tight guardrails. So what I’m hearing is that depending on how much data you have and how good it is really widely affects the quality of the tools you’re inputting. And that’s why I’m here to find out how the different legal tech providers are handling that and challenging that, because that’s the main thing that we want as lawyers, right, is to make sure we’re accurate, but not opening up to risks.

Robert Hanna: Well, that’s it, isn’t it? You’ve got to be compliant. You’ve got to control your lines with regulations. You’ve got to make sure you’re also, you know, but also, you know, making sure that you’re taking the steps and not being ignorant. And I think it’s great that so many organisations and law firms and people are here today to get the knowledge to then go away and apply it. I think not everyone’s expecting to get this right. Absolutely. Because everything’s so fast paced and changing at the speed of light. I think the main thing is people are actually taking action and actually lifting their head above the parapet and thinking there is a lot that still needs to be done. I love the fact that you’re a journalist that gets on the ground, right? And you come out and meet people. I can just see you know everyone around the conference. There’s a great energy. Unless someone has literally been living under a rock, can you tell us a little bit more about The Lawyer?

Lucie Cruz: So The Lawyer is a legal magazine, or at least it used to be a magazine and now we’re entirely digital. So you might have had our red magazines on your desk in the past, but now we’re a completely digital product. And we usually cover legal news and financial news to do with the legal industry across different beats, so corporate and litigation. And now I am launching Tech and AI.

Robert Hanna: Ah, that’s gonna be super exciting. And I love everything that you’re doing. What’s been a standout moment for you thus far at LegalTechTalk?

Lucie Cruz: For me, it’s been hearing about the different use cases of Gen AI. It’s phenomenal how many there are. And I think that’s going to be really interesting for lawyers especially to come here and see how many possibilities there are. I think people have in their head maybe a sort of 10 or 20 ideas, and they don’t realise that there are hundreds. And they’re just waiting for the right one to land on their doorstep.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, I still get giddy about the potential of this. And actually you really do need to come to these conferences and embrace the knowledge and then go away and implement because Gen AI is just still getting started. This is the worst it’s ever gonna be as of today. So you passport this to LegalTechTalk Year 10. This is gonna be crazy what we’re gonna be doing. There’ll definitely be an augmentation of myself or something talking to you. That’s for sure. So what are the future plans for The Lawyer? And where can people find out more about you and The Lawyer? Feel free to shout out any websites, any social media handles. We’ll also share them in this episode for you too.

Lucie Cruz: Yeah, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I definitely recommend it because I do post many posts all about tech and AI. We also have an Instagram, The Lawyer Mag, and The Lawyer website is thelawyer.com. You can get lots of information, not just on legal news, but now on sort of what’s going on in the industry and in financials so.

Robert Hanna: There you go, folks. Go and check it out. Lucie, thank you so much for sharing the mics with me in person at an awesome conference, the inaugural LegalTechTalk. But for now, from all of us on the Legally Speaking Podcast, 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 hub, The Legally Speaking Club over on Discord. Go to our website, www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com for the link to join our community there. Over and out.