AI for Law Firms: 4 Things Non-Techie Lawyers Can Do With AI - #206

AI for law firms is already here—and most family lawyers aren't ready for it. 

A $100M AI firm just got approved in Arizona to co-own law firms, and family law is next.

So here’s the 4 practical things non-techie lawyers can do right now to get comfortable with AI—no coding, no tech background required.

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📄 CHAPTERS

0:00 - AI for Law Firms: Why Jeff Hughes Is Paying Close Attention Right Now 

1:04 - What Is Eudia and Why a $100M AI Law Firm Should Matter to Family Lawyers

2:09 - The Arizona Law That Lets Non-Lawyers Co-Own a Law Firm 

6:29 - How AI Is a Direct Attack on the Billable Hour 

10:41 - 4 Things Non-Techie Lawyers Can Do With AI Starting Today 

14:27 - Train Your Brain to Go AI-First: The Habit That Changes Everything

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4. TELL US WHAT YOU WANT:  
Tell us in the comments if you liked this episode and what other kinds of episodes you would like to see.

Transcript

0:00

as CEO of Serving Lawyers, I it's my responsibility to be to be the one that's forward looking, looking out of the horizon, making sure we're positioned within our firm to meet the changes that AI is bringing and the changes that are coming just as society evolves. Welcome back to the Sterling Family Lore Show. I am one of your co-hosts, Tyler. I'm also the CEO of our marketing consultancy called Rocket Clicks that was born out of our very own law firm, Sterling Lawyers. Today I have our co-host, Jeff, who's the co-founder of Sterling Lawyers with us, and we're going to have a little just, riff session on the law changes that have happened in Arizona around alternative business structures, which essentially is having non attorneys own law firms. There was some big news that just came out regarding and AI company that's building a law firm that got approval in Arizona to do this. Jeff, pretty interesting news. Yeah. So this is what really caught my eye, Tyler. And what I wanted to talk about was there's this new AI law firm they're calling it based in in Arizona, and it's called Eudia. I think I'm saying that. Right. It's Eudia. And they've come up with a pretty interesting take on combining AI with delivering legal services. And so I want to talk about the because I can see it potentially rippling downstream to us family lawyers and how it might impact us. So I want to just kind of talk over what it is and why I think it matters to us and family law. And I think and I see a potential and we're already kind of experimenting with this here at Sterling. But I see a potential how this could apply to family lawyers sooner rather than later. And then I I've got some ideas on what to do about it, how to think about it, kind of how to approach AI as a whole. I'm not just specifically with a sudden situation, but as a whole. So that's the kind of stuff I think it'd be kind of fun for us to talk through. Let's do it. Just starting from the top. I think it's important that we, for our listeners who don't understand the law of change in Arizona, why don't we start there and then we can dive into how, it's adopting an AI. Yeah. Okay. So Eudia bills itself as a legal tech company and then they raised over 100 million. So Just enough. Sure. just to get them to get them going. And their, their proposition, I think probably to their investors, they're the kind of their, what they're trying to pitch their investors, they're going to build advanced AI tools for lawyer. And so they've launched their firm called Eudia counsel LLC in Arizona. And it's like you mentioned, it's under the Arizona Alternative Business Structure Program. For those of you who don't know, that's a program that only Arizona has that allows non-lawyers to co-own law firms. So basically it's an attack on the ABA model, rule 5.4, which prohibits non-lawyers from fee sharing. And so that's that's really what Arizona is trying to do. And so this has gotten a fair amount of press over the last week. So the idea is that they have created are creating a hybrid law firm where attorneys work hand in hand with AI systems. So think of it kind of like, and I'm not a marvel comic guy, but, you know, like, what's the guy, Iron Man? He puts on the suit and all that. He becomes all these special things he can do. And he's but other than he's a normal, just super smart dude. That's kind of I like that analogy. take a normal, super smart lawyer and then, you know, cover her in AI and all of a sudden she's like iron Iron Woman or something like that. So, that's that's kind of the thinking that they're doing now. They're not in family law. So let's make that clear. This is not a family law thing, but I could see it very quickly becoming a family law thing. Their focus. So what Judea is focusing on is where the the real big money's at. And that's in the B2B space business law. So they're doing they're building tools for contract review. M&A and mergers and acquisitions are huge. And the big part where a lot of the money spent in that space is in that due diligence part of it. So they want to build some tools that are designed to enhance that, to make it go faster. And I know there's other startups that are out there that are not in Arizona that are doing that. I was approached by, a private equity company guy based in Arkansas, and he wanted me to take a look at potential investment. And it was that whole thing around M&A, due diligence and building AI tools to make that go faster. But there's another interesting thing I noticed in the multiple articles I read about Eudia is that they feel like they can build tools to build a company brain, so if they acquire a business as their client over time, the more time that goes on, the more they get to know that particular enterprise they can build the brain for that enterprise, at least from a legal perspective. So that's really kind of what they're hanging their hat on, and that's combining everything they can find about that company, all the data, putting it together and constantly training the algorithms or training the, the AI tools to to know that particular business better, that could then write better contracts for them. And just to do better predictive analysis and so forth so they can make sense so far. Yeah, pretty. Pretty wild. I keep thinking like, okay, it's happening. This is how we're gonna all work with robots. Now. Yeah. So, their goal obviously is to reduce or have a value prop. They can go out to businesses and say, okay, you're paying X dollars to your in-house counsel or your out house counsel. Is that a word out house, cancel your your third party attorneys that you're working with. And we're going to we're going to reduce that by a significant fraction with all of our tools. But you still get a lawyer involved. So you still have lawyers involved. But then you're they're enhanced by AI. So that's what's going on with us. Now. Let me now this is obviously my very well informed opinion I might have, but my opinion on this, as it relates, to family law and why I think it matters to us, I was at Sterling and all of our colleagues that are out there in the family law areas, because this is another sneak peak. Now, I'm not a doomsday, I think I it's going to create way more opportunities and raise up, you know, the economy and generate trillions of dollars in wealth for everybody that's involved with it. But it's going to have some disruption certainly on the on this front end of that. So this is a peek into where I believe the legal market is going. Now that's that is a direct attack on the billable hour, because I think over time people are going to say, why am I paying by the hour? Because I know I is doing a lot of the work behind the scenes for this sort of stuff. So yeah, so I think I think it matters because I think you're going to see clients over time to demand more predictability around their fees and so forth. And so what they're doing at Eudia is they're saying they're going to do is embed AI right into the law firm itself and offer a model where technology is not just a tool, but it's a it's a part of the service and expectation that the lawyers are going to be utilizing this. And so, Well, frankly, Jeff, they should write, like, I think the. When it comes to the conversation of AI, there is sometimes some trepidation of like, oh, well, I'm the lawyer. I'm the brain. You're paying me. But in reality, like, as more people adopt and leverage these tools, that attorney may fall behind. Yeah. Oh yeah. Without question. So like in, in in our world, I personally believe that family law as a. Just as the money spent on family law will only grow over time because I feel like the, the the services we provide to clients and other family law attorneys provide to clients is so emotional based. It's so much about support, hearing and all of the, the soft skills that go into serving clients. I think that stuff I touch, I think we're in a good place personally. We're not in transactions, for example. We're not in due diligence, which is a lot more easily I enhance than what we do. But there is a there is a percentage of what we do that's document prep. It's crafting MSAs. It's drafting contracts, is doing are not contracts, but drafting, discovery and different things that we do. And I is going to make that go a lot quicker. So I think we can repurpose that time to offering better service to our client, reducing our fees and provide something that's more predictable and then serving more clients in the process. So, you know, the obvious low hanging fruit for these things is document drafting review. I think what I think is real intriguing, especially as as firms scale and grow and we're seeing certainly more scale and family law is some of these predictive insights that that we can build over time. So like when we hire a brand new associate, you know, straight out of law school, I'm telling you, a big part of their learning curve is just figuring out how to read cases and try to understand what the court is likely to do with that, because you can go look at the law. That's one thing, but it's way more important to know your judge, your commissioner, or your quarter fish or whatever, whatever the case may be. And over time, if we're consistent of putting all of our data into the brain, so to speak, I think our predictive insights can get better and better. And and we can certainly improve the client experience, in the process. So yeah. Okay. So now let me bring it home. Okay. This is where I see what what I am choosing to do in response when I see these sort of things. Because I, we can all come out there, we can read these articles and we can get all, you know, worked up about him, get afraid, right, that AI is going to take take our firm away from us. And it's other people that are good. And I are going to get it. You know, they're going to be able to push it out of the market. And there's I think a small shred of truth to that. But I think because I'm not a techie person, and I think the vast majority of our audience, the vast majority of my colleagues in the family bar, are really non techie. Were worried people. Right, or, or relationship people were not like, you know, zeros and ones and you know computer stuff. So what what I have chosen to do to not let me back up. Now also as CEO of Serving Lawyers, I it's my responsibility to be to be the one that's forward looking, looking out of the horizon, making sure we're positioned within our firm to meet the changes that AI is bringing and the changes that are coming just as society evolves. And so to combat that, because I don't have this techie personality or our thought process like Tony does, for example, there's a couple things that I have done that I have found a lot of success with. I want to share with our audience. So I think these are things that all non techie lawyers can do that will enhance our awareness around AI, and better positioned our firm to meet the opportunities that are coming. A lot of. Yep. Absolutely. so I got four things here. So the first one is these these are practical things okay. The first one is I replaced Google as my default browser. Like I use Chrome. Right. Google is my default browser there. And I replace that with perplexity for a while. And then just last night, actually, I went back to ChatGPT because I it's gotten a little bit better than it was back when I used perplexity and how it presents information. So if I go up to the search bar and I sort of, you know, I'll type in my search, I'm not going to Google to there. I first I'm forced to go to ChatGPT or perplexity or whatever I'm using now. Quite frankly, a lot of times that annoys me because I want to I want to buy something and ChatGPT and perplexity are great for like, oh, like I want to buy this certain guitar. So I will type that guitar and it's a Santa Cruz guitar, I'll type that in. And, you know, I'm getting like all the information about the Santa Cruz Guitar Company, which that's great, but I want right about. it. I don't want to like hear their live story. But if I go to Google, I'm going to get all the places that that particular exact guitar is being sold. So what it forces me to do is start first on my searches with, with, with AI. Then I have to manually come out of that. So it's forcing me to change my habit. So that's for an old dude like me that's, you know, Smart. I love that. right. Yeah. You gotta like, all these neural pathways are very deeply ingrained. Right. So I have to like, you know, coat those over a little bit and create new ones. So. So that's the first one is replace your default browser. Second one is listen to something every day on AI, even if like it's not making sense to you. Now there are tons of podcasts out there on AI and I use I think it's the AI daily, something like that. Yeah. Is that right? Is that the Yep. Daily AI review. I'll look it up on. yeah. And that's usually five. The first 5 to 7 minutes are the news of the day. And then they'll go into a, a topic like they'll read someone's article and they'll kind of analyze it kind of like we're doing here. But look what what that's done for me over the past year. Is it it's a raised it's raised my awareness of AI. It's helped me understand the issues that are coming on. A lot of this stuff is way above my head. And I have to just basically skip the podcast for that day because I'm not understanding it. And that's okay. But it's forcing me to constantly have AI as a part of my thought process in conversation. Okay. Just for our listeners, it is called the AI Daily Brief. Very, very good. one. Yeah. Yeah, I think I pay like five bucks a month for the non for the non commercial version, which I would suggest you do that because the commercials are super annoying, a break in all the time and it's worth, it's worth it worth five bucks a month. They avoid all that. So the third thing is adopt one tool. Just do one simple, simple thing and force yourself to learn one tool. And that could be ten minutes a week. Just something. And it could be some fun stuff like get a an AI image generator tool and just like, you know, do cat videos or something. something to start learning the skills Yes. of AI. So that's the And take a platform. Right. Like you mentioned. Perplexity or ChatGPT but there's a thousand now, like, you know, agents out there. I would suggest you pick one. And to your fun point, I, my son, my five year old son's birthday is coming up, and I had ChatGPT build a whole coloring book. Featuring him and his brother and our dog. You know, the cool stuff that you know, you never could do beforehand. But your point about just embrace and play around at first. We'll we'll get you more comfortable. Yeah. Okay. In the last one, this is the one that's going to take a little bit of purposeful training, okay? Because you can't, you know, put obstacles in front of you and do this. Just start thinking and training your brain to go to AI first for every problem. Even if you check the box and say, I can't solve my lawn mowing today, okay, that's a that's not a problem I can really address right now, but everything else, especially if it involves bits and bytes on a computer screen, I can can significantly enhance that. So practical examples of that, because yesterday I'm in a financial review with our CFO and our president, and we're talking about when we take on a client in month one and we pay the bonus to the lawyer, usually about month five, how do we forecast that based on, you know, January's new clients that we have to pay out in May to as bonuses? How do we forecast that. And we're going back and forth like why don't we just go to I dump all that and say, give me the formula for our forecasting. That's one thing last night, like, I want to buy. I want to buy a small house for my family while we build our other house. And I had it just put together the entire postcard. I want to send all my neighbors in the area saying, hey, this is what I want to do. And it was. It saved me several hours of create creative thinking that like, drains my brain. So it's just like start there first. That's probably the most important one of all of these is start there first, because it's a skill that has to be honed and developed over time. Time. And, when you're prompting context, the more context you can give the AI for more complex apps, right? Like, you know, here's the variable, number one, as it relates to when we get money in and here's when we pay our attorney out is variable. Number two, the more context you can prompt in the better answers you're going to get out. That that's true. And that's what I'm told by I'd be honest with you, I'm not good at these problem. Mine are usually like one sentence long. And then I have to do it six times to get to the actual answer I have to keep. Oh, wait, wait, I mean, add this to the prompt and then to, like, give me another answer. Oh, I gotta add this. So so it's a it's an evolution process. So don't be discouraged if like you can't write these masterful beautiful prompts because they're actually getting way better at taking, you know, simple minded prompts from me that, you know, give me the answer. Ultimately, several searches later. Hundred percent. I think just to tie this all together right. We know AI is coming. As it relates to alternative business structures and what's happening in Arizona, you know, that may be coming as well, but as as the focus on family, I think the initial adoption of understanding the AI is not going to take over. It's not going to take our jobs. But let's embrace that this is there as a tool. Let's leverage it in our firms when we can, and let's continue to watch what happens. Yeah, absolutely. Well-Said. Love it. Thanks for your time today.