00:32:56 · Jay Madheswaran, Alex Rampell
[00:32:56] S0: we can help them make the best decision in every single case, and know when an optimal outcome has been achieved. And it's still, I would say, it's still the attorney's responsibility to push it even further. And I think that is what I meant by data science like work, because they're using the power of software to do work you never even thought to do, to improve the outcome. [00:33:16] S1: And I mean, where do [00:33:17] S0: you... [00:33:17] S1: This is a very broad question, of course, but like, where does the legal system go? I was having some some trouble with Wells Fargo. And I'm like, you know what? I've tried, like, for four hours to do this. I'm just going to sue them. So I went to Codex, know, ChatGPT. I was like, sue Wells Fargo. Four hours later, it had sued Wells Fargo. It actually found a process server. I got the notice of cert... Like, we're going to court, but, you know, the date is in February. Like, another kind of similar vein is happening with patent law, where before it's so much work to go file a patent. Now it's less work to file a patent, but you still have the USPTO, which is the bottleneck. So I guess, I mean, if you were to prognosticate, like, where does the legal industry go now that AI is becoming table stakes and you're delivering... You're part of that table, obviously, for plaintiff law. But if you think about the entire practice of law in general, how does it change if you were to fast forward five years? What does it
00:34:11 · Jay Madheswaran
[00:34:11] S0: look like? What's similar? What's different? Most likely, I think it's inevitable that you're going to have to create systems where not everything goes to the court system. And this already is a framework that is used in law. For some types of Veterans Affairs cases, that goes through a different committee. For even labor and employment, that goes through EEOC in a lot of cases before it goes through. And employers have figured out different ways to mediate and have arbitration that doesn't necessarily go through the court system. And this is the framework that actually naturally evolves, and I expect that to happen more and more. And I think the tweak that's going to happen is that for some pockets of it, we're probably going to go through some version of ADR, Automated Discrete Resolution, where AI enabled mediators or central parties that have a neutral view of both sides are going to use AI to really speed up how they come up with judgment. And I don't think that judgment will really be replaced, but what they will get is a set of facts that shows, historically, here's how this happened. Here's how this happened. And it's up to them to remove the biases that might exist. And I think we're just going to spend more and more time on that side of things.
00:35:30 · Alex Rampell
[00:35:30] S1: And do you think the small law firms get bigger? Because that would be the other thing. It's like, if I could only handle a 100 cases per attorney, now I can handle 500, but in the future, maybe 5,000. You know, why do I limit my office to, like, a very, very small New Jersey location? You know, may... Maybe I should go more broad. And you're going to have kind of larger, almost like corporate, like, law entities. And, like, I I think the biggest trial attorney firm is Morgan and Morgan. Is that right? And they have billions of dollars in revenue, but your average firm is is quite small. Mhmm. But you could imagine powered by Eve and with all the changes that we're talking about, it's like the small firm could actually become a billion dollar revenue business. It's kinda like venture outcomes versus kind of like what you would call a lifestyle business. You were a VC once upon a time, you know that term. Somewhat pejorative term for like you make profits. But how do you think, like, is that a reasonable take that, like, some of these small guys can actually... I mean, obviously, you can't go public as a as a law firm for now. Maybe in Arizona or something, you can. But do you think there's a chance for some of these local mom and pop stores, if
00:36:40 · Jay Madheswaran, Alex Rampell
[00:36:40] S0: you will, to become very, very large institutions? I think the transformation that's going to happen is a lot of these law firms are going to look more like software companies. I think they're going to finally participate in the software revolution that's been happening for the last thirty years they've been left out of. And if you kinda deep dive, you'll understand why. Let's say you have a $25,000 settlement. The attorney gets maybe a third of that, Let's call it 8,000 for simplicity. And of that 8,000, about half of it goes towards labor spend, 30% goes to marketing, and the rest maybe is profit. That's kind of the business Because as it exists of that business, it is so difficult to reinvest back into servicing your next client better. The only way you can really do that is by hiring a better attorney today. What changes is now they can actually accrue a database and dataset that is unique to them, that gets them results that is better than their competitors for a subset of law, and this is specialization. And historically, this industry already been through that. Like thirty years ago, there was your neighborhood lawyer that handled everything, from employment cases to IP to what have you. [00:38:00] S1: Exactly, exactly. And and now what
00:38:00 · Alex Rampell, Jay Madheswaran
[00:38:00] S1: Exactly, exactly. And and now what [00:38:03] S0: we have are specializations of practice areas. You have someone that's really good at IP, someone that's good at employment, and now it's getting even more specific. Right? Like someone that's good at, let's say, nursing birth defects or or something along those lines. And I can anticipate that to go even another level, where now someone could get really good at soft tissue injury cases that involve x and y fact patterns. And it... Advertising for those cases might be a lot more cost effective than some other larger firm like Morgan and Morgan just showing their billboard everywhere. [00:38:36] S1: So get good at something locally and then expand That's right. Just across the entire country because you have such high confidence around that one field. That's exactly right.
00:38:36 · Alex Rampell, Jay Madheswaran
[00:38:36] S1: So get good at something locally and then expand That's right. Just across the entire country because you have such high confidence around that one field. That's exactly right. [00:38:44] S0: And so I think we're gonna see that type of specialization, and I think we're also going to see the opposite, where some of the large... We're also working with some on the scale of Morgan Morgan. Like, some of them actually are coming together. So those ones that got us big are actually going around buying other law firms, because they realize with Eve, they can very quickly consolidate what used to be a very painful reintegration process, now can be done on exactly what the client wants, which is, hey, the client wants a legal outcome, and Eve is made just for that. So by doing that, they get to largely work away from a lot of the change management, workforce changes, operation changes, because Eve handles a lot of that for them, they can speed up their time to making that acquisition worth it. Well, the funny thing is that there's this movement underway to outcome oriented pricing. [00:39:37] S1: So like software, SaaS used to be per seat per month, and I used to joke it was like the tall, grandi, venti model that software is selling. It's like you go to, like, any SaaS company's website. This is why, you know, Claude can clone them all so readily. They all look the same. It's like $79 a month, $99 a month, $1.29 a month, you know, tall, grandi, venti. And it was per seat. And look at a company like Zendesk, which had $2,000,000,000 of ARR when they were