Mitch Jackson: Harnessing the Power of AI and Social Media #107

In this week’s episode of The Screen Lawyer Podcast, host Pete Salsich III sits down with his good friend and mentor, Mitch Jackson – The Streaming Lawyer.  

Get ready for an engaging conversation as they explore the fascinating world of AI, web3, licensing rights, and the game-changing advantages of establishing your personal brand as a legal professional. 

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Podcast sponsored by Capes Sokol.

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Transcript

The Screen Lawyer Podcast is brought to you by Cape Sokol, Attorneys at Law. 

00;00;00;09 - 00;00;19;08
Unknown
Hey there. Welcome to The Screen Lawyer podcast. My guest today is my friend Mitch Jackson, The Streaming Lawyer, among many other things, from Southern California, who's going to join us and talk about his journey as a lawyer, but also as someone who's prolific on a screen. He's been a mentor to me and it's going to be great talking to him today. Stick around.

Welcome to The Screen Lawyer Podcast. The intersection of the entertainment world, intellectual property law and emerging technology where we discuss the legal and business issues surrounding any type of content that ends up on your screens. I'm your host, Pete Salsich, The Screen Lawyer.

00;00;19;09 - 00;00;52;06
Unknown
Hi there. Welcome to The Screen Lawyer podcast. I'm Pete Salsich, The Screen Lawyer. And my guest today is my friend Mitch Jackson. How are you doing, Mitch? Pete, I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for having me on your new show. I'm loving it. You're welcome. It's a pleasure. It's you. We've shared screens like this in the past a couple of times, but I've been your guest, so I'm particularly honored to have grown into the chair with the headphones.

00;00;52;06 - 00;01;11;05
Unknown
So now I get to look at you in the camera. And you're looking good in a suit. Were you in court today? Oh, thank you, my friend. Absolutely. Had Zoom this morning, number 14 on the calendar and otherwise you'd find me in a golf shirt and probably a baseball cap. But it's great to be here. And I'm looking forward to having I always look forward to seeing.

00;01;11;05 - 00;01;27;20
Unknown
You're one of my favorite intellectual property lawyers on the planet. I'm so glad that our paths have crossed, I'm so glad that we've gotten to know each other. And it's truly an honor to be on on your show. Pete Well, I appreciate that, Mitch. And I think it's worth, you know, letting folks have a little sense of kind of how we know each other.

00;01;27;20 - 00;01;48;26
Unknown
We several years ago and you were way ahead of me in this world, which I found out, but I was kind of coming into this practice as a screen lawyer, coming out of my in-house world and getting involved with the maximum lawyer conference with our good mutual friend Jim Hacking, who's actually the guy who gave me the name The Screen Lawyer and a little bit of brilliance.

00;01;48;29 - 00;02;05;08
Unknown
And I remember the first night of the conference here in Saint Louis, he grabbed me and he said, Come on, you got to meet. I want you to meet Screen Lawyer, meet The Streaming Lawyer. And that was you. And you were the keynote speaker at the conference that year. So tell us about The Streaming Lawyer. What where does that come from?

00;02;05;10 - 00;02;25;07
Unknown
Well, it came from video and like video back in the day, as you well know. And members of your audience may not be aware of this, but that back in the early digital internet, social media days, I immediately wrapped my arms around all the different digital opportunities to brand, to connect with clients. And I embraced live video right away.

00;02;25;07 - 00;02;46;02
Unknown
And it was one of the best decisions I ever made because it was before we were doing Zoom videos like this. Right? Right. It was on a platform called Screencast and the co-founder Stubb had rolled out a live video platform for social media. And I got a call from Screencast, which you don't know us, but we'd love to have you as part of what we're doing.

00;02;46;02 - 00;03;12;05
Unknown
And I said Yes. And my friends Pete were telling me, Mitch, why are you going on? What? I'm saying something wrong? What if you make a mistake? I'm like, have you been around me? That's just the way I roll. But it was a really important decision for my career because what happened was it's within a couple of weeks I was on my video shows with Katie Kirk, Anderson Cooper, Peter Diamandis, Seth Godin, a lot of really well known people, which amplified my brand.

00;03;12;05 - 00;03;41;05
Unknown
And when it was all done, brought in new clients into the firm. So that's what got me motivated. Yeah. I've never been accused of being the brightest bulb in the lamp when I saw the results too. Basically putting yourself out there and we're going to talk about that today. Everything else changed. And I think for purposes of fast forwarding to today's show, everything that I did back then, it's actually 100 times, the feedback, the opportunity, the branding possibilities in today's world.

00;03;41;05 - 00;03;55;15
Unknown
So that's what got me here and that's why I'm still going full speed ahead and I'm loving every minute of it. It's fun. Yeah, to meet people like you and I've always been. And that's great because you were. You were. I was at that time just trying to figure out, okay, I'd like to do this work with these people.

00;03;55;15 - 00;04;15;29
Unknown
And I had been in-house and I was beginning the process of, you know, branding, like you just said, it's exactly the right term. And I worked for clients that were in the branding world, so I understood the concept, but I hadn't thought about it as a lawyer. Like what does that mean for me or my firm or my practice and so hearing it from you and then getting to see you do it.

00;04;15;29 - 00;04;43;20
Unknown
And then as we got into COVID and of course, everybody went to screens, suddenly it was more prevalent, but you were always out in front with the new platform or new concepts. And that brings us to where, you know, you've kind of taken the lead today and that's in the AI world. And I want to talk about that in a second because you posted something the other day that just blew my mind, which makes a perfect framing device for our talk today.

00;04;43;27 - 00;05;05;14
Unknown
But I want to give my audience a little bit more about Mitch, because you're not just a lawyer who goes on video. You're a family man. You and your wife, Lisa, have an amazingly successful firm and have for a long time. Gary and AJ, your kids are, from what I can tell, you know, doing great as young professionals.

00;05;05;21 - 00;05;27;09
Unknown
You and Garrett written a book together. I see you running in your videos, you’re running and you’re paddleboarding. You just tell us a little bit more about Mitch Jackson, the non-streaming lawyer. Like when you are not on camera, what are you doing? What's your what's your favorite thing? Well, so here's the thing. I try to be strategically transparent when I'm sharing my content on social media.

00;05;27;09 - 00;05;49;13
Unknown
So you're seeing that good stuff of great. Well, more it's curated. I get it. You're, you know, but it does kind of pull the curtain back in. My whole purpose for doing what I'm doing is to really being a first generation lawyer growing up on a ranch in Tucson, Arizona, being the first person in my family to graduate from college, certainly the first one to go to law school.

00;05;49;15 - 00;06;11;11
Unknown
I realized shortly after passing the bar, starting my practice from day one, I opened up my own practice out of the back of my car while playing basketball down Laguna Beach. Kind of my own way. But but I really gravitated to the value that lawyers bring to society. In other words, I think we make just a a huge difference in the quality of all of our lives.

00;06;11;11 - 00;06;36;21
Unknown
And now our clients lives. And I realized with social and digital what you see me doing, it allows us, instead of having one on one conversations with clients to have a 1 to 100, a 1 to 10000 or 1 to 100000 conversation with recorded video and other other platforms we're going to talk about and what it was allowing us to do as lawyers is basically show the community the good side of what we do.

00;06;36;23 - 00;07;03;08
Unknown
And for me, that's what it's all about. It's like sharing the fact that we're human beings where the neighbor next door, we're doing what we're doing because we enjoy helping people. We enjoy taking them by the hands and helping them with their complicated intellectual property issues, which, by the way, you are positioned exactly where lawyers need to be moving forward, because right now IP is the big talking point with everything we're going to dive into that day.

00;07;03;10 - 00;07;27;29
Unknown
Yeah, it is. And so so I'm using this just as a way to communicate and connect and build relationships locally, nationally and globally. And it's really been a lot of fun. Pete And, you know, I think who am I am a, I'm a husband and father first. I'm someone that understands the importance of trying to put mental and physical health and make that a priority.

00;07;28;04 - 00;07;58;19
Unknown
You know, it's so important and and then building different businesses and building my practice for the last 37 years. I don't know if you're aware of this, but we're transitioning this year from me anyway, from litigating and trying cases over into full time private mediation. Well, we're going to be here. Yeah, I have noticed that you're acknowledging. Yeah, I have noticed your the a lot of push lately about your mediation, which I think is such an incredibly powerful part of our legal system.

00;07;58;19 - 00;08;29;16
Unknown
I my father was it was often a mediator in his career as a law professor because of that ability to just too. And I remember thinking when I was a law student, you know, my classmates would be like terrified over the Socratic method. And I would just say, Well, that was how I was disciplined when I was, you know, if I was a stupid teenager and got caught drinking beer, doing whatever instead of getting yelled at, I would get sat in a chair and my dad would say, Well, let's talk about this.

00;08;29;16 - 00;08;45;21
Unknown
And he would just walk me down this plank with a series of questions until I walked myself right off of it. So by the time I got to law school and I got, well, I get this process. This is not scary. This is this is what I grew up with. But it was good at that. You're good at that, you’re good at communicating.

00;08;45;26 - 00;09;05;22
Unknown
Well, I've learned that I think that mediation that ability to connect and I when I was doing more litigating, all I would say virtually every successful case, including the sort of wins that you have a trial, the most successful cases where a good settlement in a mediation, often where business got to happen afterwards. So that's really cool that you're doing that.

00;09;05;24 - 00;09;35;14
Unknown
You know, we're leveraging these platforms to allow us to mediate, not in not only in the traditional conference room, local mediation settings, but across the country and across the world. Right now, 20% of our mediations to date this year have been in other states, in other countries via Zoom. So this new technology that we're talking about allows all of us share opportunities to expand, to develop new departments in our firms, to roll out new products and services depending on what you do for a living.

00;09;35;20 - 00;09;58;07
Unknown
So I'm having fun kind of walking my talk and leveraging all the new technologies we're going to talk about to keep life interesting. You know, I you know, look, I've been practicing 37 years. I'm 65 years old. I'm more excited today to roll out of bed in the morning than I've ever been in my life. There are many lawyers that are practiced more than ten years who are going to tell you that.

00;09;58;07 - 00;10;17;08
Unknown
So I know what I'm doing works and I'm excited to take this to the next stage of my career and help people all around the world with the mediations using the technology that we're using right now. This is just talk and you're and you're and that's one of the themes that we're going to talk about this. I'm going to I'm going to tee up I'm going to ask you this question, what's on your screen?

00;10;17;08 - 00;10;34;11
Unknown
And we're going to get into it here in a minute. But that's that's part of this whole ethos that I'm trying to, you know, embrace even more fully is that we literally all live our lives on screens now, some of us more than others. Right. But we consume things on screens, we learn on screens, we do business on screens.

00;10;34;11 - 00;11;00;26
Unknown
And so all of these intellectual property issues, but just human issues, business issues all resonate around screens right now. So you're taking this to mediation that a lot of people like. Wow, that's a great idea. Why do I think that? Well, so simple. No, no, no traveling. It keeps the price down and it's effective for everyone using breakout rooms on Zoom or people doing mediations in our virtual Metaverse conference rooms.

00;11;00;28 - 00;11;24;21
Unknown
Real quick, let me just share. Yeah, we all bring I brought the cowboy sports guy into my practice three decades ago. You know, I know you're a musician and you like to be on stage. Right. And before we went live, we were talking about a couple of things getting caught up. But what I've noticed is, for all of you listening, if, for example, if you're a lawyer, bring into what's on your screen, your other hobbies, interests and passions.

00;11;24;21 - 00;11;46;03
Unknown
In other words, one reason Pete is so good at communicating is that he's comfortable being on stage. He's comfortable multitasking, singing, playing the guitar, looking at the webcam, looking at his notes all at once. And Pete, I think you'll join me in agreeing. The more we do this, the easier it gets. It absolutely gets, right? Absolutely. And I want everybody to wrap their arms around that.

00;11;46;03 - 00;12;14;27
Unknown
It's important. I agree with you. And you were the person they told me was when COVID hit and our band couldn't play like a lot of people. I gradually started occasionally just standing in my office because I had all my equipment there, setting up my and mic and playing some songs and recording myself on my phone and then doing that and finally having the the whatever guts to push publish and put it out there and then engage in the conversation.

00;12;14;29 - 00;12;36;26
Unknown
You had seen a couple of those and you're like, You have to keep that up. And that led me. You are a lot of the reason I got into doing the walk and talk Tuesdays, which are videos that I did know are such a long time. Well, I know and you were always so complimentary and because that was me want and my neighbors laugh at me because they're like, You're not walking around talking to yourself anymore.

00;12;36;26 - 00;13;02;20
Unknown
I'm like, Wow. I was kind of involved back in the office now, but it was a good I have a good therapist, but it was it was that chance to I had to say I had to speak, right. I had I just like you. I've got a need. That's the right word for it, frankly, to speak, to share, to do whatever the right word is at the time.

00;13;02;20 - 00;13;16;28
Unknown
And so learning and feeling comfortable from people like you, that I could do that on the camera and to be willing to put it out there and find an audience. And I'm not I'm not hung up on, you know, how many likes this will get or this one's going to get a lot more likes and others I know because you're on it.

00;13;16;28 - 00;13;38;16
Unknown
But you know, that's not the immediate gratification. It's more of the process of sharing. And then people would occasionally find an episode months afterwards and connect on something because they found it in some other way. And I always thought that was really cool. So thank you for for bringing us here And now. Now here we are with AI just exploding.

00;13;38;18 - 00;14;02;10
Unknown
Unbelievable. I am trying to, you know, race like full sprint to just try to stay near the front of the wave of the IP issues as they come up. But you've been much more involved in the doing and I'd love it if you could take us through a little bit more about your process. I mean, you mentioned before just a minute ago in the mediations using the your virtual rooms.

00;14;02;10 - 00;14;37;19
Unknown
And I think that's that's wild. And I that's still something I haven't done myself yet. So help us understand how that works. Well, I have a curious mind and time is for me and most lawyers, it's our most valuable asset, right? And so anytime I can leverage technology that allows me to save time and create a better client experience, to create a better result, I'm all in, I'll get up early, I'll stay up late, and I'll play around with this technology and artificial intelligence Web3 technology, virtual reality, Metaverse technology.

00;14;37;21 - 00;15;09;14
Unknown
This is changing the world. All of these things working together. I think are going to have a greater impact on society than the printing press, electricity and the Internet as we know it combined into one. We are living in real time watching change happen. And it's this creating a global community that's allowing someone in an isolated region of the world with one of these in his or her right hand to do commerce, to engage with the rest of the world, to build businesses and to make a difference.

00;15;09;14 - 00;15;36;09
Unknown
And so that's my why behind what we're doing. But what we're doing with AI, for example, is we're leveraging artificial intelligence, specifically Chat GPT for to update our templates to allow us to improve our legal pleadings to and we'll talk about that in a second. Regarding hallucinations, to allow us to develop outlines to we have an upcoming wrongful death trial.

00;15;36;11 - 00;16;00;03
Unknown
And so I'm in a very conservative venue, Pete. We're going to be seeking substantial money damages from the jury. And so what we did is we created a prompt in GPT four, which is the AI everyone, and we said, Listen, you're an experience. We're telling the prompt. You're an experienced psychologist, human factors expert, top graduate from a law school.

00;16;00;05 - 00;16;23;17
Unknown
You're a sociologist, you're a communications expert. We're picking a jury in the X, Y, Z venue. It's conservative. These are three trending topics right now in this community that they're dealing with, whether it's to keep things vague, whether it's storm damage, whether it's a controversial political, you know, nominee, whatever it may be. Right. Design and develop for us.

00;16;23;19 - 00;16;49;10
Unknown
50 questions that you believe we should be asking our jury during jury selection to make sure that we've got the right. But sitting in the right seat right at the beginning of the trial. And so literally within 30 seconds, not hours, not days, within 30 seconds, we've got 50 killer questions, open-ended questions, because we're telling the prompt make the questions open-ended where, you know, I've tried a lot of cases and I'm pretty good at picking a jury.

00;16;49;17 - 00;17;11;07
Unknown
But inevitably, you know, every time I do, there are 5 to 10 questions that didn't even cross my mind. Right. And it's like, okay, let's incorporate those open-ended questions into jury selection. And then using these technologies you can drill down with respect to question number 16, and then you go into the who, what, when, where, why, and how type of questions to follow up.

00;17;11;09 - 00;17;37;13
Unknown
And before you know it, within just a couple of minutes, you have more content in front of you that's going to help you leverage selection of an outstanding. Yeah, that's just one way we're leveraging this technology and it's it's so powerful, it's so fast, it's so good that when mistakes are made, I think we all have read about the attorney that used AI to create a legal brief, right?

00;17;37;17 - 00;18;04;10
Unknown
Included false, fake, misleading or inaccurate cites. Right in the brief. And I've had a lot of people reach out to me about that. I get it right. I think that within a year AI will be training itself so that doesn't happen again. Last month I was standing in court. There's a lawyer defense counsel on the other end of counsel table writing to the judge in real life, inaccurate case law.

00;18;04;12 - 00;18;30;22
Unknown
One case was overturned. It wasn't even valid. You know the difference between AI and that lawyer, I continued to train and get better. That lawyer is more focused on getting out and playing 18 holes that afternoon and really improving his craft. Right. So it's just one of these things where we're embracing the good, we're kicking the tires and we're trying to use it to create a better client experience along the way.

00;18;30;22 - 00;18;59;09
Unknown
And I've never seen anything like this. When you combine some of the Web three technology, some of the virtual reality technology, it's just it's mind blowing. It is mind blowing is that's literally and hearing you just describe the jury selection process that outlined that. You know, and I remember that from my days as a litigator, that that was one of the most difficult because, you know, you know, by that point, you know, your facts, you know your law, you know your witnesses, you know your environment.

00;18;59;09 - 00;19;16;15
Unknown
But there's still that. It's almost that vomiting out the first stuff and then you can sort it right. You've got to get all that stuff out of your head. And that's a drafting, I think, a challenge. I struggle with it as a writer, you know, it's what is the first, getting it all out there. Then I can sort it.

00;19;16;15 - 00;19;39;26
Unknown
And so I think this is it's already been an amazing tool. But what you just described is a really fascinating use case that I think a lot of my audience in our you know, my colleagues in this building know that's really cool and is. Well, I don't mean cut you off. Go right ahead. I was to say just real quick along those lines, we're creating this within a private data set.

00;19;39;26 - 00;19;58;16
Unknown
We're using different apps that allow us to create private data sets so it doesn't go out to the general public. Right. And what we're doing is we're importing our deposition transcripts, all of our medical records, all of our case notes into it. So as we work on the file, I can actually prompt that particular data set. Wow. And get an instant response.

00;19;58;18 - 00;20;21;29
Unknown
Okay. Based upon what you have in the quote unquote master dataset, which is what we'll label it, what are six issues you feel we'll need to focus on during closing argument? Two to be able to empower our jury when they go back into the deliberation room, what are the ten questions they'll be asking themselves? What do we need to fill in the blanks on record?

00;20;22;04 - 00;20;42;04
Unknown
So creating private datasets allows you to leverage this new technology, just like you and I would with 20 paralegals. Sure. That now it's right in the palm of our hand or right in front of us on our screen. And so that's why that's on my screen, my friend, because it's changing everything. Yeah, it's an exciting time to be alive.

00;20;42;06 - 00;21;05;19
Unknown
Well, and I think you are. You are What I was what I was going to point out is that, like, the unlike unlike the lawyer that you were standing across the courtroom from, who was citing old or bad law and it's any anybody's spending time in the courtroom that happens. Sometimes it's accidental, sometimes it's laziness, sometimes it's eagerness to get to the tee time.

00;21;05;21 - 00;21;27;22
Unknown
But the the guy and you know, who recently did it with AI think. And what comes up in my world, like on the copyright, particularly heavily focused on the copyright in the copyright office is already giving us some instruction in these places. But it's that human authorship, there is no substitute. You'd write this. These tools are just that.

00;21;27;22 - 00;21;55;23
Unknown
They're amazing tools. They're efficiency tools, they're connection tools, they're communication tools, but they're just that if we want to use them successfully as the professionals that we are, we still have to decide which of these issues we're going to emphasize. Yes, we got a prompt. It saved me a couple hours of brainstorming and writing or maybe days, but I still have to ultimately make the decision.

00;21;55;26 - 00;22;11;25
Unknown
I'm still responsible for making sure if I'm going to put something in a brief or say something out loud to a judge, I better read that case and I better know that case is real and I better have, you know, we're going to show our age and I'm going to say we're better off. Jeopardized it. You know what?

00;22;11;25 - 00;22;33;02
Unknown
If we better make sure that we got good due diligence. Due diligence before we go back now. And and here's the thing, though. It's helping us do our due diligence. For example, when the Andy Warhol Supreme Court case came down, I think you'll remember on LinkedIn, I took that case and I fed it in. And by the way, everyone there are there are bots out there.

00;22;33;02 - 00;23;01;22
Unknown
There are apps out there that allow you to take the PDF, for example, of a Supreme Court case and instantly feed it into your dataset, into your dataset. And I put it is the dataset. And then there was a subsequent case that the court was looking at the Jack Daniels case. Right, Right. And I said, okay. And I said that in and I said, based upon the the the findings, the rulings of the Supreme Court in the Andy Warhol case, tell me what's going to happen with the Jack Daniels case.

00;23;01;28 - 00;23;21;10
Unknown
And it did a legal analysis and it was spot on. I mean, it was spot on. It's exactly the way the court ruled. And so, you know, we can use what it gives us and someone like you that that does IP, you know, as as your focus, that's your profession. You can look at this and say, okay, I see where it's going.

00;23;21;12 - 00;23;44;15
Unknown
You can do subsequent prompts to help, help understand where it came, how it came to its decision. And then you can agree or disagree or prompt some more with the areas that it may have missed. Because I've also noticed putting in case holdings that it's giving me the wrong information. Sure, sure. So we need to be careful right now and I think that's I think that's it.

00;23;44;17 - 00;24;20;29
Unknown
And I think that's probably been true all along for you. I mean, you described early on that you you were out in front doing the live video when people are like, what are you crazy? You're a lawyer. And aren't you worried about doing the wrong thing? And of course, we can all. But but it's still ultimately something that goes out under your name, even if it's you know, so so is, I think what I talk to people about on the IP ownership thing is and the Copyright office, you know, it's entirely different conversation and whether we think AI's ought to be considered personhood, that's a different philosophical question, maybe legal question for another day.

00;24;21;02 - 00;24;39;26
Unknown
But until and I as a person, then they are not. Now you have to have a person that has to be a human authorship component to the creation of intellectual property and the Patent Office has held that, the Copyright Office has held that. And I don't think that's going to change. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't use these amazing tools.

00;24;39;26 - 00;25;00;10
Unknown
It's just like anything else, having an understanding. If I use it this way, I have some risk if ownership is something that matters to me. But for somebody else, ownership isn't what matters at all. It's this type of creation. They don't care if they're putting stuff out in the world that the public can own. Maybe they even want to.

00;25;00;12 - 00;25;22;00
Unknown
But if your business model depends on the one copyright owner who can control the licensing and the revenues and distribution and all those things. Now you have to be careful that you didn't somehow let that IP ownership leak out by one of the tools. And frankly, I think more than likely not the owner. It's not the intended owner.

00;25;22;00 - 00;25;46;20
Unknown
It's going to be somebody in the chain of creation leading up. I do a lot of work, as you know, in the in the film and production world where there's a bunch of humans in different stages of creation before there's a finished product. And every single contract, every single relationship on that way up is built on having one copyright owner at the end of the day, and then you negotiate for what piece you get in this or royalties or everything else.

00;25;46;20 - 00;26;30;01
Unknown
But it's intended to have one copyright owner and it's going to be somebody down at that level that, you know, save some time on some graphics or something and is not careful where there may be something that gets challenged. And I just saw the other day the Authors Guild is suggesting some new language to balance both author's rights and the use of AI for guild members in publishing agreements and so and this is something I predicted a little while ago that lawyers we draft things in our contracts way before the court gets there because we just know we're going to have to deal with this situation.

00;26;30;01 - 00;26;53;02
Unknown
And until we know exactly how the court's going to rule, we have to decide, Well, since we don't know exactly how the court's going to rule, I'm going to take it out of the court's hands and I'm going to make it clear in my contract that I don't have to worry about the judge, you know? And so I think that's the evolving challenge for those of us who are writing contracts in this area, which is really all looking.

00;26;53;04 - 00;27;16;21
Unknown
You're looking at what we're talking about through the lens of an IP lawyer, right. And I love that I'm looking through the lens of a litigator and a trial attorney, which I know you do, but that's not an IP lawyer. And you said a couple of things that just make me want to smile, because as a lawyer, there are so many issues with this new technology, I should say opportunities, for example.

00;27;16;23 - 00;27;42;26
Unknown
Yeah. If you're not into the technology, but you're in your transactional lawyer into contracts. So we have contract law, we have jurisdiction issues, we have venue issues, we have the centralized web3 smart contract and NFT issues. Okay, Right. I've got a friend that's a well-known actor and producer in Hollywood, B, who's creating video content and and distributing it via NFT Non-fungible tokens.

00;27;42;27 - 00;28;05;18
Unknown
Right. And his his movie that they're just they're in post-production right now. It's called Razer. And he's got some famous actors in the movie with them, costarring with him. And so there are all of these different types of legal issues that good lawyers can plan ahead, whether it's contract, whether it's licensing, whether it's insurance coverage issues for everything that we talked about.

00;28;05;18 - 00;28;27;10
Unknown
Sure. So there's just a lot going on that for me, it keeps things interesting. I used to about ten years ago, go for a paddle and I was so on top of the law and so on top. I've been doing this for so long, no new issues. All I thought about was paddling, looking at the dolphins. And now I get now I paddle around the harbor and my mind's racing.

00;28;27;10 - 00;28;47;00
Unknown
Yeah. I thinking about all these issues that I that we are talking about. And so while it's exciting and fun, I think it's also an opportunity to roll up our sleeves and really, if you're serious about building out your practice, we're building new products and services. Spend the time each day to get us up to speed on this new technology because it's changing everything.

00;28;47;03 - 00;29;08;12
Unknown
I think that's obviously true and for a lot of the folks that I talked with regularly, professionally and as friends as well in this business, they're on the production side. They're on the creation side. Right. So and that's a group of people I talked to about about this a lot during COVID. They were one of the first industries to problem solve around it.

00;29;08;15 - 00;29;33;26
Unknown
Right. Because, you know, okay, well, we have to have people stand further apart. We can't have everybody on set. We have to have craft services deliver food differently. But they just within weeks just started writing different rules because it was so in their nature. And if you've ever spent any time on a set and watch this happen, there's all these professionals that are, you know, there's what they were planning to do, there's a shoot schedule and it's pretty tight.

00;29;33;28 - 00;29;51;09
Unknown
But then there's everything that happens during the day that they have to react to. And so as a profession, as a you know, that's a group that solves problems in the instant. So they become early adopters of things and so of course they're early adopters in this space. And I've had calls say, hey, I want to just use this.

00;29;51;09 - 00;30;13;01
Unknown
And I'm like, okay, you can, you can and you should, but let's at least talk about it. What job is this? Who's paying for this? What's the ownership structure? What are we doing with this? Just to make sure that your excitement for the technology and for the opportunity doesn't cause you to misstep from a legal or a business perspective.

00;30;13;05 - 00;30;31;14
Unknown
And it's not you know, I learned a long time ago we've had this conversation. If I want to do this area of law, I, I can't have no as my default answer. Because you're just going to find somebody is going to say yes, I need to say yes and do it like this. And so this is another area for me.

00;30;31;14 - 00;30;58;15
Unknown
I'm learning, trying to soak up as much as I can, which leads me to the question I want to tap here, because your answer I know is going to be awesome and teach us all. I have everybody on this. Yeah, no pressure. There. Everybody, every guest. If anything, I ask the question, what's on your screen? And the reason I ask that is because I think that's an it's a it's such an interesting insight into what someone's doing and thinking in the moment.

00;30;58;15 - 00;31;22;26
Unknown
We all carry our screens around in our pockets. They they're on the wall. So sometimes I say, what's on your screen? And the person's main immediately goes to the thing they're watching that's on Netflix, because at the end of the day, that's when they're relaxing in the bathroom selves or the spouse or whomever. And that's they share this moment of just the old fashioned way of passively receiving someone else's screen work.

00;31;22;28 - 00;31;46;08
Unknown
Somebody else answers the question with what they're working on. Somebody else answers a question with what's stopping their thumb while it's scrolling. And so for you, you posted something the other day that marries all these things together. So I'm going to just tee it up, match what's on your screen? Well, what you're referring to is the Netflix Black Mirror series episode one of the current year.

00;31;46;11 - 00;32;21;27
Unknown
Joan is awful. Yeah, the name of the episode and I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but it has a component of a generative content. It's something that involves licensing agreements between lawyers and celebrities and actors, and it's a concept that allows content creators to create unique content for a specific individual, specific company, a specific industry that's probably not too far off on what we're going to be seeing down, down, down the pipeline of 5 to 10 years.

00;32;21;27 - 00;32;41;13
Unknown
Right. And what was interesting is, as I'm watching this, I'm thinking to myself, you know, O-M-G, this is something that my son Gary and I just coauthored a book on. And what that was, everyone is, is I am all in on web3 and in the metaverse. I just find this stuff interesting for all the reasons I already shared.

00;32;41;15 - 00;33;15;17
Unknown
But I also see a huge licensing play for existing content creators, influencers, entertainers, artists, musicians to start leveraging the web3 spaces. The metaverse right, and and everything else in between using licensing agreements. And I've got my old my old roommate is one of the top entertainment lawyers up in Los Angeles. And I did a presentation to his firm probably about a year ago, I think 30 or 40 partners, big firm, and they wanted to get up to speed on Web3 and the metaverse in virtual reality.

00;33;15;17 - 00;33;44;09
Unknown
And it just wasn't something they were that familiar with. They're really my age, right? And I could just tell from the questions this is what their clients are asking them about. This is they want to be performing in a metaverse venue. They want to be utilizing NFT to sell merch and to create these new brands globally. And so what they're an idea is we put together a book on licensing in the new Web3 AI metaphor spaces to show people and to plant seeds.

00;33;44;09 - 00;34;09;27
Unknown
On how all of this works. Get people familiar, especially lawyers with the terminology. So for me, the fun part about the book was doing it with Garrett. Yeah, Yeah. And tell us a little bit more about that because I have a read book. I bought the book. Oh, okay. Okay. But when you would tell it a little bit about Garrett and the book and where people can find it, because we will this will be we'll have our audio version but on the YouTube we'll put links and so forth.

00;34;09;27 - 00;34;36;08
Unknown
So it so this is this is thank you for asking this is this is real time on how I'm leveraging these platforms everyone. So last October I spoke at a global lawyer convention. I was the closing keynote in Toronto. We had 30 different countries, 25, 28 states represented, and I was there to talk about web3 the metaverse and I because I was the closing beat, I had already gotten to know almost everyone at the at the event, right?

00;34;36;08 - 00;34;56;15
Unknown
We had 3 to 500 people and everyone was interested in the topic. But I realized from the from laughter patterns being raised during the Q&A session, people were just I found out afterwards, I talked to them. They were intimidated. They didn't know where to start. They didn't know what questions to ask. They didn't want to come across as not being up to speed in front of their peers at the event.

00;34;56;15 - 00;35;19;17
Unknown
Right? So I came home and Garrett came home last December and by the way, he graduated from USC's Marshall School of Business. He's a post creative strategist at VaynerMedia in Los Angeles. So this is something he really enjoys doing, right? We sat down and we leveraged A.I. to help us write the Web3 A.I. and Metaverse Handbook, and so it helped generate ideas.

00;35;19;19 - 00;35;39;20
Unknown
Chapter titles about 80% of each chapter the AI helped us write, and we went in, added our human aspect to it, our own personalities. But we wanted to have something that we could just give to a senior partner so they could in 3 minutes understand what a smart contract is or blockchain technology or whatever it may be. Right?

00;35;39;20 - 00;36;01;09
Unknown
What is cryptocurrency? And we just wanted to have a quick read in it and it worked really well. It's fun to do with Garrett, but it was also easy to pump out a book on that specific topic and then make it available on Amazon Kindle paperback or PDF. Right, right. Fast forward to a couple of months ago with the licensing issues.

00;36;01;13 - 00;36;37;19
Unknown
We did the same thing. Now, having already done it once or twice, we kind of understood what the pros and cons are when it comes to using AI to help create this type of content, right? Each book's better than the last. And so with the licensing book, we really dive deep into every single element An influencer brand ambassador, entertainer artists may want to take into consideration when building out their brand on the new platforms, but also written in a way that helps lawyers and agents and management companies understand what the possibilities are.

00;36;37;19 - 00;36;59;20
Unknown
Right? And so we did it together. So for me, as a dad, it was fun just working with him and spending more time with him doing that. And I probably talked to him in six months. But here's the other thing. We also managed to pump something out that allows me to just send somebody a PDF or send somebody to Amazon and it allows us to amplify our brand once again.

00;36;59;20 - 00;37;18;22
Unknown
Sure. Of course. Does that help me? How does that help me write? How does that come back and bring a business? Well, here's the way it works, everyone. I also knew I was transitioning from full time litigation and trial into mediation. Guess where all of these issues that need to be mediated are in today's world? Yeah, they're in the web3 space.

00;37;18;22 - 00;37;48;01
Unknown
So by creating this book, by distributing it around the world, I'm positioning myself as a mediator that understands this technology that can come in and hold everyone's hands. The challenge right now in this space is we don't really know what the courts are going to decide on many of these issues. And so companies don't want to spend a lot of money litigating for years on issues That could literally be the flip a coin in the option.

00;37;48;01 - 00;38;12;23
Unknown
The alternative might be a 4-8 hour mediation, private, non-binding. If it works out great, if it doesn't, it's no harm, no foul. And you get this thing done, you push it aside, you continue to roll out your products and services. That's the mindset of the new entrepreneur. And so what I purposefully did is piggybacked what we're doing in this, you know, in the licensing book.

00;38;12;29 - 00;38;34;22
Unknown
What everyone will see in this Netflix show with this business venture, and I encourage everyone to kind of think the same way because it works and it works really well. So that's the long answer. Your short question. Well, no, but but no. Gosh, I mean, that's that's the beauty of it, because it walks through. And I do think you're absolutely right.

00;38;34;22 - 00;38;59;09
Unknown
You said something there that I grab for a second because you talked about how you know these issues. A lot of times you're coming up with you've got the users, the creators, the early adopters. You've got their consuming public right. But it's that lawyers, agents, managers, business, you know, executives, the folks that are not creating necessarily, they may be creative, but they're not producing.

00;38;59;09 - 00;39;17;08
Unknown
That's not their job. And they're not the consumers. They're the deal makers. They're the folks doing the business structure. They're the folks figuring out, well, where's you know, I always like to ask clients, you know, well, how do you make money? We need to know that so we can figure out how to structure your business. But how might you make money?

00;39;17;08 - 00;39;45;05
Unknown
What might happen? Let's imagine what could happen in the future for something. And in this situation, we've got you know, I think your tool, the book that you and Garrett wrote and the work that you guys continue to put out there helps those people whose job it is to know enough. Right? They don't have to know all the details, but they need to know enough to see how the pieces fit together, know enough to know what questions to ask.

00;39;45;07 - 00;40;05;14
Unknown
And as you said in the mediation world, I mean, I remember the first mediation I ever went to as a young lawyer and a mediator here in town who who was the go to mediator for if you could get him that was that was your best choice often. And his speech not to the lawyers was always to the parties.

00;40;05;17 - 00;40;30;14
Unknown
And he would describe to the parties, you know, you can either let your business or personal. And for me it was usually business situation leave that up to 12 people that you don't know or you can make your own decision. Today is your opportunity to try to make a decision that you can control. And just that sense of I don't want to take the risk.

00;40;30;14 - 00;40;45;25
Unknown
You know, you always have the occasional client that says, I've never paying you anything and whatever, but most of the time they don't want to take that risk. And so this is just a new version of that, right? This is, as you said, you know, I can I can picture that audience. I would have been in that audience.

00;40;45;28 - 00;41;04;05
Unknown
Not sure what question to ask. But now we know that for everybody. I felt bad for everybody because because we had had dinner together, we had drinks together. I knew what they wanted to bring into their firm, but they just did not want to come across uninformed in front of their peers. Right. You know, what's interesting to me is along these same lines.

00;41;04;07 - 00;41;29;25
Unknown
I actually I'm a big fan of trial by jury. I mean, I just think it's just really levels the playing field. Sure. Everyone involved now. Right. So but having said that, with some of these new issues, we don't know, like when I take a case, oftentimes I know if I prove a B and C, then I'm going to get the result of D or F, depending on how things play out during trial.

00;41;29;27 - 00;42;08;15
Unknown
We just don't know when it comes to these new spaces. And and just to wrap things up with a nice, transparent bow, I'd like to use the word transparency. In other words, what I'm also seeing our clients do, everyone is are being transparent when they're when our clients are using third party creators or in-house creators that are that are leveraging AI to create the content that's going out, whether it's code, whether it's movies, whether it's video videos, they're being transparent with their clients as to how this is being done, that leveraging AI and should we or should we not do this because the last thing you want to do is create an $8,000,000 30 second Super

00;42;08;15 - 00;42;44;15
Unknown
Bowl ad, right? Using a logo or a song or something that you thought was copyrighted when in fact it's not because AI was behind the creation of that particular digital asset. Right? So transparency with everything that we're doing right now I think is really, really important. And so that's why with our books, what Garrett and I have done is on the cover at the very bottom, we've said something like researched and written with the assistance of I know in our in our first book, we even listed as one of the authors I know I remember, you know, I remember seeing that kind of trying to figure it out, too.

00;42;44;20 - 00;43;12;02
Unknown
Sure. Sure. And I do feel like now that I know what I know today, being transparent in today's world is key with our clients, with co-counsel, even with defense counsel. Real quick about mediations, one thing I've learned about mediations is two of my largest jury verdicts that I've obtained over the years, multimillion dollar verdicts. They came from unsuccessful mediations where I walked out of that mediation, learning something new.

00;43;12;02 - 00;43;33;16
Unknown
I knew absolutely right. And so rather than diving in during the mediation and exploiting that issue and it's hard for me, I kept my mouth shut. You want to you want to prove your case. You want to prove their case right that moment. But you will table it right. You know, let it marinate a little bit. I'm going to let them kind of put some things under sworn, sworn depositions and then it was go time to out.

00;43;33;23 - 00;43;58;12
Unknown
So I just think it's kind of fun with web3, smart contracts, decentralization, metaverse, all of these things. We can do the same thing as lawyers, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, as creators, as artists. We can watch what's happening. Yeah, See what's what's resonates with you. Think to yourself, How can I embrace this into my business or my practice to create a better final product or experience?

00;43;58;14 - 00;44;22;13
Unknown
And that's what we're doing. And Pete, you know, one of the other things is we only have so much time throughout the course of the day. So some of the AI tools that I'm using allow me to copy and paste a blog post into an AI tool and have it create a video with music with overlays, right, and distribute that content across ten or 15 different platforms, or vice versa.

00;44;22;14 - 00;44;50;07
Unknown
Take a video and using AI it creates written content and then taking that written content, turning it into an audio. And now it's a podcast. I mean, maybe five years from now, you and I doing this might be the avatars that we watched in episode one of this season, Right, right, right. Yeah, that's the direction we're going. But if you learn how to communicate and build rapport and keep that human component, I think that's what's going to separate the winners.

00;44;50;13 - 00;45;13;22
Unknown
The winners right, from the losers. And I'm I'm still I'm old school. I, I love the fact the competition's good. I like the fact that everybody feels good about their efforts. But when it's all said and done as a trial lawyer, when that verdict comes back, I mean, I'm either representing a client who's a winner or loser. And so for me, you know, it's serious business, but that doesn't mean we can't have fun alonthe way. Right.

00;45;13;24 - 00;45;37;19
Unknown
Well, and like you said, something there and and I want to use the word that you wound up to the transparency. I mean, one of the things that I've always loved about since I got to know you is you I want to say overshare, because that has a connotation like you told me things like, oh, I overshare. Oh, I Well, but you do oversharing in the very best way in that you are absolutely happy to share your knowledge.

00;45;37;19 - 00;46;08;20
Unknown
You are. You're a firm believer that the more people who know these things that I have learned, the better for all of us. And that's not going to come back and hurt me in a competitive manner, if anything. And I know lawyers have been out there, look, if you have another lawyer across the table from you in a negotiation or, you know, in a lawsuit or whatever, and you and you know, that lawyer is also very good and is very serious and doing the research, that's usually a really good thing, because now you know that you can focus in on the things, but you're not going to have this distraction.

00;46;08;20 - 00;46;28;23
Unknown
You're not going to have to educate the other side on various issues. And I think that that transparency that you talked about is the key in this intellectual property space. And that's what we're starting to see in the contracts. Just say whether you're using AI don't try to hide it, don't try to pretend it's your work when it's not.

00;46;28;26 - 00;46;54;11
Unknown
First of all, you're not supposed to do that, period. But this tool doesn't make it. It might make it easier, so to speak, to do some things, but it doesn't make it easier to get away with it because frankly, it's easy to catch. And you know that in the reality is just you're going to you're going to start to see contracts where in productions they'll say, you know, we want an RFP request for proposal.

00;46;54;14 - 00;47;27;25
Unknown
No, AI can be used. You need to certify that no or we want you to use it or somewhere in between. And you'll have language that says I was used but enough sufficient human authorship. That's the way the Authors Guild is going. I think that's an example of the the legal and business world grasping all of these things as fast as they can, knowing they're going to be behind and stay behind, but trying to figure out how to order their business by good language, good negotiating, good, transparent contracts to take care of it.

00;47;27;27 - 00;47;54;28
Unknown
And that's something that, you know, you and I agree on 100%. I'm going to ask you to send me a clip of what you just said so I can turn around and share it with my community, because you just summarized exactly what's important issues are. You know, look, I'm I'm old enough. I remember walking to a courtroom and during the morning break while the jury was out, it was just the judge and I in the courtroom when I'm setting up my laptop to assist me with an overhead.

00;47;54;28 - 00;48;11;26
Unknown
It wasn't even PowerPoint at my day before PowerPoint as we know it, but I wanted to use that technology for an opening statement. The judge was, Mr. Jackson, you know, what are you doing? I told him what I was doing. Because you're not using that in my courtroom. Okay, Your Honor. No problem. And so we just proceeded.

00;48;12;02 - 00;48;30;24
Unknown
Imagine walking into a courtroom today and not have any technology there. Right. Right. For the lawyers to use. In fact, back in the day, we used to have to eventually bring our technology into the courtroom. Once the court once the judges were okay with it. Now you walk in and everything's ready to go, each courtroom set up, at least here in California.

00;48;30;26 - 00;48;58;11
Unknown
And so I see the same thing happening with the technology that we're talking about today. I see Nonfungible token NFT technology being used on the blockchain when it comes to filing and discovery and litigation. I see AI actually allowing parties to instantly import data from a case, legal analysis, whatever it may be, jurisdiction limited and literally within 30 seconds settling the case.

00;48;58;14 - 00;49;21;21
Unknown
I mean, I see attorneys leveraging this technology to get better results for their clients faster in a more economical fashion and frankly, in a more consistent way. It's just one of these things where we want to embrace and understand and watch what's going on instead of just brushing it off. I think I think that's rising too much. You're in trouble.

00;49;21;28 - 00;49;42;17
Unknown
Yeah. And you sit and wait up with another great word from you. Embrace. This has been image Jackson words since the first time we met. Embrace this. Embrace what you're trying to do. Embrace this new technology, embrace video, whatever it is just and it is that's an embrace. It's a hug. It's like, get it in there, get into it.

00;49;42;19 - 00;50;01;10
Unknown
And then, you know, don't lose your mind, don't lose your values, don't change the good things you already know. But don't be afraid to get in there and figure out how to navigate. I think that's key. Mitch, this has been a blast. You and I could keep talking forever, but I know you probably have client work to do, and I do as well, but this has been such a treat.

00;50;01;11 - 00;50;28;24
Unknown
Thank you. And I mean, the sincerely, it is an absolute honor to be the one interviewing you and hosting you on the podcast. But I'm also happy to be your guest sometime again soon, anytime you want. Thank you. Your words mean you mean the world to me. Anytime I can spend with you. It's always my pleasure. I would like to share with you please anyone is interested in receiving my treat any a pdf of any of the books that are out there.

00;50;28;24 - 00;50;50;10
Unknown
Yeah. You go to my website at MitchJackson.com, you'll see depending on your device that you're looking at the websites either on the side or down at the bottom. You'll see a list of the books and you know, whether it's web3, whether it's licensing, whether it's for the mediators out there. My latest book is The Mediator's Handbook, where I try to pull all the new modern communication techniques that we're using right now in Zoom, right?

00;50;50;11 - 00;51;09;11
Unknown
We're using our body language, which both looking at the webcams. It's my treat. Just messaged me. I'll get a PDF version out to you and whatever I can do to help your community. I'm always here for you and I'm happy to you. And by the way, thank you for being a great person I can refer my IP business to.

00;51;09;11 - 00;51;32;27
Unknown
Yes, not what I do. It's very specialized. Every time I think I'm getting it down, I realize after after messaging you on LinkedIn, I don't have a clue as to what the real issue is. So thank you for being there. For my referrals. I hear it's my it's my pleasure. And we will include a link in the YouTube version of this to your website image and you for offering that to guests.

00;51;32;27 - 00;51;51;06
Unknown
It is a tremendously valuable resource, as is everything. Next year. You got to go check out The Streaming Lawyer, MitchJackson.com. If you do a search, you're going to find him because he's in a lot of places and it's always worth your trip. Mitch, thank you very much. Hey, everybody. This has been another great edition of The Screen Lawyer podcast.

00;51;51;07 - 00;52;09;00
Unknown
If you have enjoyed this and you're listening on audio, get it wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're watching on YouTube, hit that like and subscribe button down below. So You stay current with all the work that we are doing here at TheScreenLawyer.com. Thanks again, Mitch. Talk to you soon. Take care. Bye bye.

You've been listening to The Screen Lawyer Podcast with your host Pete, Salsich - The Screen Lawyer.
For more information or to stay connected, find us on social @TheScreenLawyer or check us out at TheScreenLawyer.com