Note: This transcript is generated from a recorded conversation and may contain errors or omissions. It has been edited for clarity but may not fully capture the original intent or context. For accurate interpretation, please refer to the original audio. 

JOHN QUINN: This is John Quinn, and this is Law, disrupted. And today we are speaking with Rebecca Zung, she's a lawyer. How long is it? But you're not practicing these days.

REBECCA ZUNG: No, because I have an AI tech company, and I teach people how to negotiate and create leverage in their situations. I have a lot of lawyers that work for me still, but they help advise clients and how to...

JOHN QUINN: How long has it been since you were actually practicing?

REBECCA ZUNG: Only about three years.

JOHN QUINN: And how did you give it up? I mean, you practiced for how many years?

REBECCA ZUNG: 23.

JOHN QUINN: 23 years, and you did a lot of family law.

REBECCA ZUNG: I did high net worth family law.

JOHN QUINN: Okay, and and that you see some people at their worst,

REBECCA ZUNG: Which a lot of people don't realize is a trial lawyer.

JOHN QUINN: Yeah, of course.

REBECCA ZUNG: Yeah.

JOHN QUINN: How did you, I mean, was it kind of a jump to decide to stop practicing and focus on your AI and the other things that you do?

REBECCA ZUNG: It happens sort of organically. I started on YouTube during COVID, just because you know the courthouses were all closed and everything was closed down, and so I had been trying to teach myself the algorithm on YouTube, and I also was teaching myself how to build courses. Like you know, I was always looking for a way to not be trading time for money, you know. Even though I had associates working for me and that, I still had to review their work and all of that. And so, you know, I was trying to figure out how to stop trading time for money. And so, I started on YouTube during COVID, and I started with negotiation in general because that's what I used to lecture on, like a lot, just to build my practice. 

Nobody wanted to hear about divorce law, so I would build my practice by speaking on negotiation for lawyers or for anybody. You know, I used to joke because I practiced in Florida, and I used to joke that I spoke for every Rotary from Sarasota down to Marco Island, like it was like everybody that asked me to speak. Okay, yes, I'm coming. Hadassah, sure. I mean, League of Women Voters. Okay, I'm there. Realtors, okay. You know. So, but that's how I built my practice, and so I did a lot of speaking on negotiation, and wrote the book on negotiation.

JOHN QUINN: These really intriguing titles. One is Slay: How to Negotiate with a Narcissist Bully and Win.REBECCA ZUNG: Yeah.

JOHN QUINN: The other is Negotiating Like You Matter.

REBECCA ZUNG: Yes.

JOHN QUINN: How did you realize that? I mean, obviously, there came a point where you thought I really have some knowledge about negotiation that I can share that will be valuable for people. How did you reach that point?

REBECCA ZUNG: It really came about because I had started my own practice more years ago than I want to say at this point, but it was a long time ago that I had started my own practice, and I was looking for ways to, you know, have clients, you know, bring in more business, and I knew nobody really wanted to hear about family law, and so I...

JOHN QUINN: But everybody negotiates. At some point in their lives..

REBECCA ZUNG: Right? So I developed talks on how to negotiate and win, and if it was talking to women, it was how to negotiate for women and you know. So I could just sort of tailor it in different ways, and so that's what I started to do. And when I started on YouTube, I started just on negotiation in general, and nobody was watching. I mean, literally, it was my mom and her church friends who were like, "Yeah, I saw all your videos. 

But I did one video on how to negotiate with a narcissist, and that was in January of 2020, and it got like you know, 800 views at least initially, and that was you know probably about 794 more than I was getting, and and so I thought, okay, I'll do some more content around that. I'll just test it out, and I decided I was going to create a $500 digital course on how to negotiate with a narcissist to sell on the back end, and I decided I was going to go live with that course March 11th  of 2020 I hired a videographer and I had it all produced and everything, and then of course I didn't know what was going to happen in the world, and by January of 2021, just 10 months later. 

And by the way, I had 1,000 subscribers in March of 2020. I remember because I finally went over 1,000. I was literally asking everybody I know to subscribe. By January of 2021, I had over 100,000 subscribers, and I had sold 1.1 million dollars of that one 500 course. And I thought, okay.

JOHN QUINN: There's something here. There's something. I can do this.

REBECCA ZUNG: I think I can maybe do this. But I kept taking cases. I was really doing more like, you know, we had talked when I interviewed you of like, okay, I'll let my name be on the case because a lot of people, you know, at that point I'd really built a name for myself, and so, you know, I'll just come in and I'll just do the trial, or you know, I was like having associates do a lot of the work, and so I would still do the trial part, the part that the clients cared about that I showed up for, and but I was trying to do less and less. And so the more this business developed, and I've even had to shift in this business because online courses aren't really a thing anymore, and so two years ago we built a custom GPT, which we started including in my courses, and that kind of..

JOHN QUINN: What’s a custom GPT?

REBECCA ZUNG: So it's taking like, you go to Chat GPT or something, and you can load in all of your information, like all your books, YouTube videos, that sort of thing, and then it starts to think like you think, and you train it, and then people can use that GPT to interact with.

JOHN QUINN: Ask questions, get advice.

REBECCA ZUNG: So you know, how would Rebecca Zung, you know, tell me to respond to my lawyer on this question or something like that, and so I decided. You know, I would like to put it behind a paid wall, and something that would preserve attorney-client privilege, something that would be a little bit more organized for people, and so I started looking around for developers, and we went live with that at the end of January of this year, and we offer what we call enablement packages around that, which is for people who don't want to have to sit there and use the AI on their own. They really do want somebody to sit with them and tell them how to prompt the AI, how to organize everything. So we have attorney advisors that we pay to do that with people, and they can buy, you know, three, eight, or twelve sessions or whatever. And then…

JOHN QUINN: And is this getting legal advice?

REBECCA ZUNG: No, no, no. It's just a negotiation strategy. It's just a strategy on how to organize their case that will optimize their outcome for their lawyer. So it's really an adjunct for the lawyer. It's a complement to what the lawyer's doing.

JOHN QUINN: And can you give us some idea of the size of your online audience now?

REBECCA ZUNG: Oh, I have about 2 million followers total. Just went over. I think I have 1.1 million on YouTube now, and then you know a few 100,000 on Instagram. I know there's probably 300,000 on Facebook as well, and and so…

JOHN QUINN: Congratulations! It's amazing.

REBECCA ZUNG: Yeah.

JOHN QUINN: I mean we spoke before we started recording here, and you use the word leverage a lot, and I have a sense that you have a particular sense or meaning for that word when you use the word leverage. What do you mean by leverage?

REBECCA ZUNG: So leverage, and you know, I started calling myself the leverage lawyer recently because I teach people how to get it. It's really how do you get results? It's how do you motivate and incentivize the other person to want to resolve your situation? That's the most basic, and there's a lot of different types of leverage. There's timing leverage, influence leverage, and information leverage, and I mean, there's more kinds than we have time to get into here. But then I started to think about it. I realized, you know, your identity and who you are and how you see yourself-that's leverage. Influence is leverage. Like how do you utilize your network and that sort of thing? Information is leverage, obviously.

JOHN QUINN: You say how you see yourself is leverage. Let's talk about that for a minute. How is that? How one sees oneself? How can that create leverage?

REBECCA ZUNG: There's this understanding out there that people think they believe if I work really hard, then I'll get the results and I'll have the results, and then I'll be the person that I think I should be, it'll magically appear. So that's the have. It's the do have be or something like that. When it's actually be, do, have, you have to be that person first, and that was what you know and I were talking about. Like you have to be that person who is the results person, the winner, the person who shows up confident, who has you know worth in themselves, who decides that this is who I am, and then you do the work, and then you'll have the results. 

JOHN QUINN: Is that a matter of changing your mindset? It's a mindset. How do you see yourself?

REBECCA ZUNG: Oh, mindset is everything. I mean, I think mindset is everything. I'll tell you a quick story. When I first started my law practice on my own, I was living in Naples, Florida, which is a very affluent community, and I had been a lawyer for eight years, and then I had left the law for two years to go be a stockbroker, wealth advisor with Morgan Stanley. So I had my Series 766 and then a friend of mine was starting, was moving, and she had a small law practice. It was only 12 clients, and I was so afraid that I was going to finish up her clients and then never get another one of my own. Like I was just so scared that I was never going to get a client, and so I remember saying to my business coach at the time, "Oh, everybody in this town is going to think I'm such a flake. Like she was a lawyer, then she was a wealth advisor. Now she's back to being a lawyer. She can't figure out what she wants. And my business coach said, "People will think what you tell them to think. She said, "You can tell them to think that you're a flake, or you can tell them to think that you're the only family law attorney in town that has a financial background, so you're actually more qualified than anybody else in town. Which story would you like to tell? And so I was like, oh, maybe I'll pick that one.

JOHN QUINN: Right? How do people change their mindsets? It seems to me that that is not an easy thing for a lot of people to do. Their sense of themselves.

REBECCA ZUNG: I agree with that. I think first you have to be aware of how you are showing up for yourself. You know what kinds of thoughts are you having. You know are you saying constantly, you know everybody's against me. The judge hates me. I can never get my way. They have more money, so therefore they're more powerful. They have more influence. They, you know, they have all these connections, so therefore they're more powerful. I can never get what I want. 

Is that what the story that you're telling, or do you show up and say, you know, I am the best in this, and you know, and and so I made a decision, and I really think you know the root of the word decide is side, which is to cut off. That's the Latin is to cut off or to kill, and you have to decide that that is what's happening, and then I think that you know the universe lines up for you, and it just starts to see you as that.

I mean, you have to decide that whoever you were before that just doesn't exist, and it really is. I know it's simple to understand. It's hard to do, but it is that easy.

JOHN QUINN: You have to make a decision, and is that a matter of having internal mantras controlling your thoughts, how you're thinking, suppressing the old kind of thinking about yourself? How does this work? Interior.

REBECCA ZUNG: I did have internal mantras. I mean mine was I'm a confident, successful professional. You know I'm a powerful expression of what's possible. When people are with me, they feel empowered. Like I just literally like had these mantras that I would say that if you know me today, you're like, well, of course that's who you are. 

JOHN QUINN: You weren’t always this way?

REBECCA ZUNG: No, I wasn't…

JOHN QUINN: You weren’t always the super confident, eloquent spokesperson you are today.

REBECCA ZUNG: Heck no! I mean, I remember we all have these stories as new lawyers, but I mean, I remember the senior partner of the firm that I worked with. He had me help him draft this marital settlement agreement. This client was worth like $100 million and he's like, well, I'm not going to be there when he comes in to sign it. It was uncontested. He's like, "All you just need to do is have him sign it. I'm going to be in deposition”, okay? And I had taken the bar, but I hadn't gotten my results yet. So it was a little period of time there. 

And I meet with the guy. I can still see myself in that conference room. Guy comes in, paralegal comes in. She's there to notarize and everything, and then she leaves. So the only person who had any knowledge of anything just left the room. So he says to me because he had been introduced to me as a lawyer he says, “So, what happens from here?”

JOHN QUINN: Right.

REBECCA ZUNG: And I remember thinking…

JOHN QUINN: "What do I say?”

REBECCA ZUNG: You know, law review, Miami, all this stuff. I have no idea, buddy. Like your guess is as good as mine is what I wanted to say, and I just remember going, "Well, we'll just. just put it all together, and John will review it, and we'll give you a call.”

JOHN QUINN: Right.

REBECCA ZUNG: Like I had, I've just felt like all the blood run out of my face. Like I was just like, oh my god, I have no idea. But you know, we all start like that.

JOHN QUINN: I mean, did there come a point where you realized, wait, I've I made a decision about who I am, my mindset, and I've internalized it, and I am now that person. It came to a point where you realized that.

REBECCA ZUNG: Yeah, you know, I think for me, it was right before I started my own practice, I was paying for my daughter's summer camp, and every year at summer camp, it was like, ah, you know, we have because my husband and I both went to Miami. We both had these student loans, not like they have nowadays, but it was you know big for us, and I went to go write the check, and every summer it was like, oh my God! You know, put the money together to find money for summer camp, and I remember saying to myself, "This is the last summer that I struggle to pay for summer camp. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm done with this. And that was by the next year. I took my husband to Paris for his 40th birthday. Like we had, you know, like we've never looked back from there. But I did. 

JOHN QUINN: It’s amazing. So you have spoken a lot on negotiation, leverage, and the like. What's and we don't have timeI know you've written on this, we have your books, which people can get. What are some things about negotiation that maybe aren't so generally understood?

REBECCA ZUNG: Well, here's I don't know if this answers your question completely, but I'm going to say this: most people when they come into the litigation process, have these wild ideas about what they think is fair.

JOHN QUINN: You’re talking about lawyers or clients or both?

REBECCA ZUNG: Clients, and they think this is how it should go. This is how it should be settled, and it's either way off or it might be right on. But the people in the process kind of need to be what I call beat up by the process a little bit in order.

JOHN QUINN: Have to have their expectations adjusted.

REBECCA ZUNG: Yeah, and many times, you know, they may even end up at the end where they started at the beginning, but they have to understand what is actually reasonable. So I think that's one. The other one is settling too early when discovery is not completely done yet. I think that's a big mistake that I see because you know if you look at your lawyer and you say, "Is this fair? If you haven't done a complete discovery, then your lawyer is going to go.

JOHN QUINN: You got to have all the facts that are available.

REBECCA ZUNG: Yeah. So I think that's another one. I think knowing what your best case scenario is, what your worst case scenario is, what your risks are really knowing what your risks are is absolutely critical, because you know yes you might be entitled to this $50,000 or whatever, but if it's going to cost you 100 to go to trial and then you go to trial and it's a crapshoot as to whether or not you actually get that because then even if you get everything you want, there's an appeals process. I mean, there's really understanding the risk…

JOHN QUINN: The risk that you face. You know, as you make these points about negotiation, it just struck me that most mediations reflect each of those points in microcosm, you spend a day in mediation. You start out at say 9o'clock The parties are there…

REBECCA ZUNG: Right?

JOHN QUINN: And as you said, it's a process.

REBECCA ZUNG: Yeah.

JOHN QUINN: And there's usually no movement till 4 o'clock in the afternoon. People just have to go through this process.

REBECCA ZUNG: They have to get beat up by the process. 

JOHN QUINN: They have to get beat up by the process. Both sides do. If the case is going to settle, they have to go through that process.

REBECCA ZUNG: Right.

JOHN QUINN: And that's part of what they have to confront, be educated, and good mediators can do this in a way that's not off putting to educate about weaknesses. What's your response to this document? What's your response to this argument? So, kind of that happens in every mediation.

REBECCA ZUNG: Yeah, and I would say the other thing is prepare for mediation as if you're going to trial. You want to go in with what I call the option A, option B strategy. Option A is here's my reasonable offer, right? And of course, it's going to be a little more than what you think is reasonable. But it needs to be grounded in something. And then you know, here's all the reasons why it works for you, and it's you know good for everybody, and have a shell of an agreement ready to go, so that you can just you know make changes to it along the way, and then option B is what I call the knife to the neck, which is okay. I'm ready to move. 

JOHN QUINN: You have to be prepared to go to trial.

REBECCA ZUNG: You have to be prepared. So and and and not only that, but you've got to be prepared to move forward with the wrath of whatever, based on their own behavior. It's nothing crazy, but it's like I'm going to talk to all of your employees. 

Then we're going to depose all of them. We're going to depose your clients. We're going to subpoena all these bank records. We're going to subpoena, you know, your new girlfriend's bank records, or whatever, because we think you're giving her money, or whatever-all those things that they don't want to see happening. But the only way you're going to get option A to work is if you've sealed off all of the exit points, and they feel that pressure. I call it, you know, motivating them.

JOHN QUINN: I call it creating a downside.

REBECCA ZUNG: Okay.

JOHN QUINN: Cases only settle when the offer on the table is better than you know what's behind door number two. 

REBECCA ZUNG: Exactly. 

JOHN QUINN: Yeah. So I'm really intrigued by this title, Slay. How to negotiate with a narcissist.

REBECCA ZUNG: Yeah. So slay the bully. So slay is actually the acronym for strategy, leverage, anticipate, and you. So you've got to create the strategy. What's your vision? A lot of people. I know that sounds crazy, but when you ask them, what is it that you want? What's the outcome of this idea? If you could paint the picture of what it is that you want, what would that look like? And they're like, "Well, I just you know I want to be paid back for my trouble, or I don't want to have to.. I just want what's fair. 

A lot of times, they haven't really thought about specifically what does that mean. If it's a partnership dissolution, then okay. Do you want to buy the other person out? Do you want the partnership dissolved? Are you starting your own company? What does that look like? Okay, then you know do we need to get valuations on this so that you can buy this person out? Let's look at this. 

What this really means, and so that's you know the vision that's part of strategy, and then leverage, especially when you're dealing with a high conflict narcissistic type of personality, is always going to be informed by their image. Always, when you're dealing with a narcissistic type of person, they will protect image over anything else,

JOHN QUINN: Explain that. What do you mean, protect image?

REBECCA ZUNG: How do they look to their clients? How do they look to community? How do they look to their new person? You know, whether it's a new business partner or whatever. How do they look to anybody? Like, so what happens with high conflict people is they are given by their limbic brain, so they will fire off that stupid email or whatever, and or they will do things that aren't necessarily in their best interest. They don't think you're ever going to keep track, so keeping track and using their own behavior as leverage is how you get them to come to a resolution.

JOHN QUINN: You use the term high conflict potion and narcissism. And so, do you use the terms high-conflict person and narcissist interchangeably? Are they slightly different?

REBECCA ZUNG: No. I actually kind of stopped using the word narcissist recently because it really is a diagnosis, and you know I think people can be narcissistic, but it's really more about how they occur for you, right? So, it doesn't matter what their diagnosis is…

JOHN QUINN: Right?

REBECCA ZUNG: They could be bipolar, narcissistic, NPD, whatever doesn't matter. It's more how does that person occur for you? Even if they're just an asshole, right? Which could be the case. You have to decide how you're going to handle it, and anticipate that. That's the A, and the A is, you know, like okay, how am I going to handle this? And the Y is you being on the offensive, you deciding who you are, because football games are not won by the defense. You know, sporting teams don't win; they don't. 

The defense doesn't score points. The offense scores points. So you want to be the one controlling the narrative. You want to be the one who's on the offensive, and that's how I always approach litigation. And then you get to be the one who controls that narrative. Even if your client has bad facts, bring them up right away because then you're controlling the narrative.

JOHN QUINN: So I mean, a high conflict person. I mean, to me, what you just said is kind of counterintuitive. If you're controlling the narrative, if you're taking the offensive, don't you risk sort of pouring gasoline on that person's propensity to conflict.

REBECCA ZUNG: To me, it's understanding the type of personality you're dealing with. Sometimes it might be fluff or favor, vomit later, right? So it might be fluff up their ego so that you can get something that you want. Telling them, you know, this is going to be so great for you because you're so good at this, and you know this this speaks all your skills, and you know whatever it is that you need to say, and then do your best, Meryl Streep or Robert De Niro or whatever, and go, oh my God, I can't believe I just settled for that. This is terrible, and then move away. So what? Take your ego out of it. 

But understanding some people really do thrive on conflict. They love that. They get a high. They get their dopamine hit by continuing the fight, even to their own detriment. Sometimes, I mean, they'll burn their own businesses to the ground not to have to pay the other person, which makes no sense. 

But it's because they're not thinking from a place of rationality, and so if you understand that, then how do you approach that situation? But you still, you cannot be in a place where you're just constantly reactive. They're filing all the motions, and all you're doing is reacting, reacting, reacting, then you're not going to be the one who has the leverage to get results.

JOHN QUINN: Yeah. No, I believe that. I believe that we have a saying at our firm that the side that figures out first what is ultimately going to matter wins, you know, because there's so much in so many cases. There's so much time going down dead ends and turning over every stone and everything, and cases settle they shouldn't on the courthouse steps after the money has been spent. But getting ahead in the litigation, in discovery, and understanding the facts, I think, is an enormous advantage.

REBECCA ZUNG: It's critical. Yeah, it's critical.

JOHN QUINN: You've also developed. You told me an AI, which you call SLAY AI. Tell us about that. 

REBECCA ZUNG: Yeah I just realized that there was a gap in the system. Let me even take a step back. A couple years ago, I had worked with Lindsey Snyder Ellingson in a.. we had a nonprofit for legal aid, and she and I. She owns In-N-Out. I don't know if you know who she is, but..

JOHN QUINN: I certainly know what In and Out is. I know In and Out.

REBECCA ZUNG: So she owns In and Out, and so we had a nonprofit together. And in having that, I started to do some research on you know what's going on in this country. Most people don't understand. Of course, you know this. 

You don't get a lawyer unless you're a criminal. Okay, in this country, you only are appointed one if you have committed a crime. If you are trying to do anything else, lawyers are really a luxury of people who have means. You know, the average person in this country makes 50, $60,000 a year or whatever it is, they have maybe a couple grand in the bank. They can't afford a $10,000 retainer and a lawyer who's charging $600 an hour, or whatever the average is now. And so, anything that people can do to reduce legal fees, make and optimize the results the better. What people don't realize is they think they're going to go hire the lawyer, then the lawyer is just going to be their savior, and they're going to just figure it all out. 

But what they don't realize is that the client has to be their partner in this and in bringing facts that are organized, and it's not just everything, and it can't just be all over the board. And because if you just hand your lawyer, you know, bankers' boxes filled with stuff, or even if it's on you know digital now, but the same, the equivalent of that, somebody's going to have to go through all that, and they're going to bill you hourly for that.

JOHN QUINN: Yeah, usually it'll be a paralegal or associate, organize it all, figure out what's in there, trying to piece piece the story together,

REBECCA ZUNG: Trying to piece it together, and and they'll miss stuff, and they get tired and they you know they've got 50 other cases they're working on your your life is not the number one I mean yes they care about you and yes the lawyer cares but you're not their only client and you know what happens is something is coming up a hearing or a mediation or something. So then the lawyer has like a weekend to get it all together and figure it out. 

And then the clients get upset because it's like, oh, how come you didn't bring up that email from June of 23 that I showed you, you know, before? Or how come you just didn't find it? I gave it to you, right? And so the more that you can structure things and find the patterns and and help your lawyer, because what happens is the lawyer standing in mediation or at a hearing, there's all kinds of accusations being flung across. The lawyer's going to look at you and say, "How should I respond? I mean, because they don't know,

JOHN QUINN: Right? Is that true? What happened there?

REBECCA ZUNG: Is that true?

JOHN QUINN: What's the backstory? 

REBECCA ZUNG: Is that true? How should I respond? And so, the more you can organize your case for that lawyer, the better it's going to be. Or the lawyer can work with the client to have a tool available for them to organize it and find the patterns and and and the supporting documentation. So that's where SLAY AI sits right in that spot. It's that gap in the that nobody has really figured out that is a gap, and it actually helps lawyers because a lawyer really can't bill. 

I mean, in a real world situation, which you know very well, if if if you look at a pre bill and you see that an associate has spent 45 hours on you know organizing file, you're going to have to write off half that time at least because you don't want the client to get that bill and go, what the hell?

JOHN QUINN: Right.

REBECCA ZUNG: And so… 

JOHN QUINN: Don't pay lawyers or paralegals to organize things.

REBECCA ZUNG: Yeah, but yet they expect you to have known it all. 

JOHN QUINN: To have all the information.

REBECCA ZUNG: Right.

JOHN QUINN: So SLAY AI addresses this gap.

REBECCA ZUNG: It addresses that.

JOHN QUINN: Well, tell us about what it does and how it's used.

REBECCA ZUNG: So people can either sign up for it on their own, or a lawyer can sign up for it per matter. If a lawyer signs up for it, there's a dashboard with all their active matters, and then the lawyer takes that active matter. You know, let's say it's you know X Y Z company versus A B C company or whatever. So X Y Z company is my client. I give CEO or whoever their EA is, you know, access to that. Then that client can upload all of their information into the document. 

JOHN QUINN: Like all the emails, all the bank statements, whatever information, data exists can be loaded.

REBECCA ZUNG: Right in there, and then they all…

JOHN QUINN: Raw form?

REBECCA ZUNG: Raw form.

JOHN QUINN: Unstructured.

REBECCA ZUNG: Yes. Now it works like a Google Drive, so you can organize out folders, and you can move things within folders and create subfolders within that drive, and then there's an incident tracker that the client gets access to too. So, oh, I just ran. You know, this actually just is a friend of mine. This just happened. She's breaking up with her business partner. She was at a cocktail party. She ran into somebody. That person said, "Oh, I heard that your ex partner is, you know, starting a new company or whatever. Oh, I didn't know that. That's a violation of our agreement. So she has to document that, so she can just open her phone, incident tracker, date, time, what happened, and then upload any proof right then and there. 

She doesn't have to remember later, and then it automatically is building a timeline, so the client only gets access to the incident tracker or the and the document depot. The lawyer has access and anybody on their team to generate leverage, ask AI. So generating leverage is okay now help me find all the ways that this contract has been violated, and give me the supporting documentation. 

And it will literally go through and find it all for you, and create a spreadsheet, create the court ready exhibit, and it's done. And and now you know your paralegal or whatever has spent maybe a few hours with that rather than you know, 35

JOHN QUINN: All right, so you can get a timeline, you get all the raw data organized in some fashion.

REBECCA ZUNG: Right, you can make graphs, heat graphs…

JOHN QUINN: Graphs, exhibits…

REBECCA ZUNG: Percentages. You know, yeah.

JOHN QUINN: How about privilege issues?

REBECCA ZUNG: That's why we built it on a private walled garden architecture. It doesn't train large language models like others. We have our own rag system in there, and it is informed by my materials, so that it does think like a trial lawyer, and it thinks like a lawyer, you know, and how to negotiate and things like that. So it might pick up things that a generic GPT wouldn't, like oh, you know, if there was a massive transfer right before the complaint was filed, oh, there might be a fraudulent transfer here. Whereas the generic GPT might not pick that up…

JOHN QUINN: So it has some knowledge. It has some legal knowledge to identify fraudulent transfers and the like contract breaches and…

REBECCA ZUNG: All of my stuff, which is how we got the provisional patent.

JOHN QUINN: Okay…

REBECCA ZUNG: On it, and and so as far as privilege goes, I'm glad you asked about that because, as you know, there is case law out there that says that if you're using public-facing Open AI or Claude or something like that, and you're talking about your case, it's potentially discovered. 

JOHN QUINN: Yeah, the Hepner decision in the Southern District.

REBECCA ZUNG: U.S. versus Hepner. If the client is, you know, working on their own in one of these AIs, it's discoverable potentially. I mean, and not at the direction of the lawyer. Right. And so you want to preserve that work product privilege by using it in this closed-end system.

JOHN QUINN: So I mean, the attorney has subscribed to SLAY AI. It's given for that client's particular case has given them access. So they're really doing something under the direction of the attorney.

REBECCA ZUNG: That is exactly right.

JOHN QUINN: So protected by both privileges…

REBECCA ZUNG: That’s protected.

JOHN QUINN: And work products.

REBECCA ZUNG: That's right. And our architect has been in AI for 30 years. He worked for the Department of Defense for 2020. He did all of the back end checking to make sure that he even tried to hack in himself, you know, and everything to make sure that it is airtight.

JOHN QUINN: How did you get the idea of creating this AI?

REBECCA ZUNG: I just knew what I wanted to see. I was like, I just wish that this existed. So I had to sit with, I mean, I'm not a developer, and I'm not an AI architect, so I had to sit with these people who knew what they wanted. I mean, know what they're doing and tell them what I wanted.

JOHN QUINN: So I guess your background is as a family law lawyer. How about cases? That you know, massive business cases where there's just huge volumes of data and documents. Are there some limitations as to how much data the system can handle?

REBECCA ZUNG: No, but you know we do have to charge more for more data and more storage. But no, there's no there's no limitation.

JOHN QUINN: That's fascinating. Anything else people ought to know about negotiation or about SLAY AI?

REBECCA ZUNG: I would say that know what your choke point is before you before you go into a mediation, like have everything planned out ahead of time while you're still thinking clearly and rationally. Because when you go into a mediation setting, it's stressful..

JOHN QUINN: There’s pressure. The clock's running. There's a professional mediator who's trying to move you off a position.

REBECCA ZUNG: Right? And understand that the mediator is trying to beat up both sides to try to push them together. But I would just say, be prepared. Be prepared for that, and understand. This is another thing. I just want to bring up a point that you know very well, but many people don't, is that if you resolve something, then it's going to be driven by contract law. And so, how do you set aside a contract? Is you know, were you drunk? Did you have capacity? Is there fraud? Is there like you know all the ways that you can set aside a contract? But if you go to trial, even if you get everything you want, there is an appeals process, and the appeals process is very expensive, and..

JOHN QUINN: Time goes by. You're living with this dispute for longer periods,

REBECCA ZUNG: And there could be a stay of execution of the order. And so, therefore, even if you got everything you wanted, it's just in limbo land. So, the more you can set yourself up to resolve things by creating that pressure, creating that motivation, that downside, as you call it, the better it's going to be for you.

JOHN QUINN: Right. Thank you, Rebecca.

REBECCA ZUNG: Thank you.

JOHN QUINN: This is John Quinn, and this has been Law, disrupted, and we've been speaking with Rebecca Zung. Thank you for listening to Law, disrupted with me, John Quinn. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and review on your chosen podcast app. To stay up to date with the latest episodes, you can sign up for email alerts at our website, law-disrupted.fm, or follow me on x at JBQ Law or at Quinn Emanuel. Thank you for tuning in.