Adapt or Atrophy: Why Law Firms Have 12 Months to Master AI

If you are a solo or small firm attorney trying to figure out where AI fits in your practice, this episode of LawLabs (a special series from the Modern Arizona Podcast) is your starting point. Carolyn Elefant breaks down exactly how to begin with AI tools, why most lawyers are evaluating them in the wrong order, and what the real risks look like when AI gets citations wrong. She also shares an honest prediction of where the profession is headed and why firms that are not adopting now will find themselves in a very difficult position within the year.

Carolyn Elefant is the founder of the Law Offices of Carolyn Elefant and the creator of MyShingle.com, the longest-running blog dedicated to solo and small firm practice. A Cornell grad who started her firm in 1993, she has spent over two decades consulting, writing, and advocating for independent lawyers and is currently traveling the country speaking to attorneys about AI and its real-world impact on their practices.

Topics discussed:

• Where lawyers should actually start with AI tools and what to avoid first
• Why you need to learn general AI tools before legal-specific ones
• How to protect yourself from hallucinated and mischaracterized case citations
• What the legal profession looks like in one year and in five
• Why firms that are not using AI are running out of time to catch up

Find Carolyn: MyShingle.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Law Labs, where a law firm life gets a glow up. I'm Billy Taraschio, founder of Modern Law, and every week we crack open what it really takes to run, grow, and scale a law firm inside the age of AI and innovation. This is where firm owners, legal rebels, and business minds come to swap ideas, share wins, and messes, and rethink what's possible in the profession. If you're ready to lead smarter, scale faster, and build a firm that actually works for you and your client. You're in the right place. Let's get to it. Hello and welcome to the Modern Arizona podcast. I'm your host, Billy Terrazio, doing a special Law Labs edition with a legal giant Carolyn Elephant, Cornell Grad, founder of Offices of Carolyn Elephant, and quite possibly the most well-known advocate for solo and small firm lawyers in the country. She has been running her own practice since 1993. She started My Shingle in 2002, the same year that I graduated law school. And she has been the longest-running blog on solo and small firm practice. She is talking currently to lawyers all over the country about AI and how AI is affecting solos. Carolyn, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Thank you for having me. This is really exciting.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

It is. It is exciting. You are, I think, a little bit of an anomaly. I don't know any other women who have been in the spotlight quite as long as you have been, as an advocate, quite as long as you have been, unless uh unless I don't know of others, but you consistently, my entire career, have been an influencer, have been out there, have been talking and pushing the envelope. Can you talk to people a little bit about why you think that is?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

I just feel like that's my natural advantage. I feel like I can compete best when I have a first mover advantage. And so I like to jump on trends early. And I also really like to be efficient with my time. I don't like to say what people have already said. I like to have a new spin on things. And so I usually don't speak up unless I feel there's a gap or a void or something that needs to be said. And I guess even in a space that is so populated with coaches and lawyers and people talking about their experience, there still are those pockets of areas that have to be addressed. And I think it's important to have those issues come up in the conversation. So that's kind of always how that's like my modus operandi, how I've been operating all these past years, is just like picking those spots that are open and jumping in and saying something.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

And and are you pretty deliberate about making sure that there is a hole before you start saying something?

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Usually, I mean, sometimes I will do, you know, for solo and small firms who aren't always keeping up with different trends, I might do a roundup on a conversation. So if there's a lot of people who are talking about flat fee billing, I might do like a roundup post on the importance of flat fee billing, something like that. But usually I try to find areas that are not discussed or perspectives that aren't given. And usually those are perspectives that impact solo and small firms. And so I try to identify the issues that are going to have the most bang for the buck or help them the most if those issues are achieved. I mean, I remember during, you know, when the cloud first came on the scene, there were a lot of legal tech consultants who were very opposed to it because they were wedded to the desktop and the security that came with that. And I thought that was really something that had a negative impact on solos and smalls because the cloud was something that was so cheap. It was a completely different, I was like now we just take it for granted that you get software by subscription. But back then it was it was kind of a radical concept. People were used to paying$10,000 or$15,000 to have a whole network set up in their office on desktop machines. And so it just seemed ridiculous to not encourage people to take advantage of these tools. So I often try to pick issues like that kind of issue that can help solo and small firms to thrive and grow and get started more economically.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

That really is a rather rebellious approach. We want to make sure we're doing the right thing. There were a lot of people, if we just talk about the cloud, touting there were ethics lawyers saying this is unethical. And so to be to be willing to say it's not is really brave.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Well, I I appreciate that, but I think it's important. We're attorneys, and one of our roles is to ensure that the public is served by lawyers and to ensure that there's meaningful access to quality attorneys, that there's competition in the legal profession, that people can choose an attorney that will serve their goals and not necessarily break their bank, their bank accounts. And so I feel like the more that I can do to encourage that level of competition, the more important that is. And I think that's consistent with my ethics obligations. So I I don't know why I I wish more lawyers would take that, would would think, would think that way.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

So well, I love it. I I think the same way you do. Um, and but but you know, there has been backlash. It's not a popular position to kind of be radical and an early adopter and push the envelope. And and so um I just wonder if you felt that as well or no.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

No, I I I definitely feel it. And it manifests in it manifests in different ways. Um, but I feel like every time I get excluded from one group, I just move on, find a new one. Endless amount of people out there to support what I say. And sometimes you discover that there are people who support you who you never would have occurred to you that they did. So that's always gratifying to learn too.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Well, that's funny. I didn't even think about kicking getting kicked out of groups, but yeah, I've had that happen too. So yeah. Um you talked about coaches. You said, you know, there's a lot of coaches, and there are. There's so many coaches out there talking about, I would say similar, but not the same content as yours. Do you are you a coach? Do you coach people?

SPEAKER_00 6:19

No, I don't consider myself a coach. I'm not a very coachable person myself because I am a little bit obstinate, and so that doesn't always work well with coaching. But um, I I don't feel like I have the skills to bring to the table with coaching. I consider myself more of a consultant and a problem solver to some extent. That's kind of the approach that that I take. And I think that moving forward, especially with AI, I think there's really less of a need for coaches and more of a need for um builders, people who can actually do things or implement things as opposed to identifying what your issues are and then having you go off and find somebody else to do that. It kind of feels like it's a double layer there.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Yeah, the coaching industry may be ripe for disruption. So, how much of your time is spent um making content, talking to lawyers versus working on your solo firm?

SPEAKER_00 7:15

So, right now, I mean, I'm really actively trying to split that. My solo firm has always been kind of the bulk of the work that I've done. I mean, everything else has really been a very busy 20% project for a long time. Um, because my practice is in energy, which is very, it's very difficult to delegate it or to take myself out of it. And I believe me, I have I have tried. I'm not of the opinion that if I had to be the one doing the work, I would gladly have other people do the work. Um, but now I'm trying to shift it more to like a 50-50 split and phase down my law practice. So I guess that's where things are now. So I'm trying to spend more time. I I mean the thing is, is now it's not just content creation, it's just learning. There's just so much to learn every day, in addition to just writing or observing or making commentary, and that also becomes much more time consuming.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Right, right. If you are interested in AI, uh the learning curve is endless and ever changing. So let's let's start there. If somebody's listening, they're like, okay, I haven't maybe put the time in. Maybe I chat with ChatGPT about what to make for dinner, but I'm interested in learning more. I want to know more. Where do you think they should start?

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Yeah, that's a really good question because I try, I try to figure out where to start myself. I think what I would do, the place to start would be to pick one tool and spend a week or two with it and try to learn different features or things associated with it. And I mean, there's a whole bunch of different ones you can pick, like Google Notebook LM, Gemini, Claude, going deeper into Chat GPT, playing around with custom GPTs and projects or whatever. I mean, they even change the name of what the features are called. It's impossible to figure things out. So I'd spend some time on that. There's a lot of free resources and YouTube. Well, you know, there are YouTube videos, but those are frustrating too because anything that's like more than a month old is going to be stale. So I guess just playing around with things yourself and maybe trying to identify problems that you have in your firm that you think that you've never solved before and just think if there's some way that AI can solve them and just kind of move through and test out these different these different tools. Just spend a little bit of time a day doing that. Or each time you approach a project, just try to think to yourself first before you even start. Is there something that AI can help me with here? Like if you have to sit down to write a brief, can AI summarize the arguments the other side made? Or can AI draft the outline for me? Can it give me feedback on this approach that I want to take? Just start kind of experimenting with it that way too. But I would definitely do one tool at a time to keep focused and then maybe bring different ones in and play around with different ones and mess around. I know there are some attorneys who are messing around with a lot of different tools too. And I would also say to play with one of the general tools like the Geminis or the Clauds before you look at any of the tools that are designed for legal, because I don't think you can assess the value that you get from a tool designed for legal, except for like Westlaw or Lexus, which are kind of just assume that somebody who has a practice is going to have something like that. But I don't I think it's very hard to evaluate the value you get from those tools until you've seen what the other ones have to offer. You can do a better comparison. What why is that? Can you expand on that a little more? I think that I think that when you see I I think that a lot of the tools that are developed for legal now, some of them are very expensive. And I think that you need to have when a tool costs that much, I think you need to be able to really assess what kind of return you're getting on it. And I think that the comparators that are available for assessing the value you get are these$20 a month or$100 a month tools that are generally speaking safe to use. And maybe, and maybe they require more work to integrate in your firm. I mean, those are things that you need to consider. But I think lawyers sometimes see what the legal tools are doing, don't realize how far behind they are with some of the other tools. And it's not a dig at what's going on in legal. It's just, you know, I read that CoCouncil just reached its millionth user after three years, and ChatGPT reached a million users like after three seconds. So they just have these general platforms have so much more money invested in them and so many more people using them. There's this endless feedback and improvement loop that takes place that you just the legal tools can't rival. So I think that you really want to look at what some of the general tools can do before you can assess what the regular ones can do. And there's different tools too. I mean, I'm talking about tools like discovery tools or contract assessment tools. I'm not talking about practice management platforms that have AI built into them because you're getting a feature, a lot uh activity on top of the AI. You're getting the practice management functions also. So that's kind of a different comparison. I mean, you could compare it with like Outlook or Google Drive or something like that. But um, but I think for the AI tools, you really have to understand. And that's the thing with lawyers. I I just don't think they understand how powerful these tools are. I mean, there's this article going around on the internet now about, you know, if you've tried AI six months after Chat GPT, and now it's just a complete it's just night and day, completely different animals. So I think that there's the other thing that people just haven't just don't know what it can do because they're basing their assumptions on what they saw three years ago. What is your current tech stack? So I use um I use Claude. I've been getting into what Claude Coork can do. Um, because I'm not so Claude and Claude Coork, um, I do use Google Notebook LM, I use Gemini, I use ChatGPT, I use them for all for different um functions. I've been trying to, I've been, which other tools have I been looking at? Um, I mean, I still for my law practice, since I started my practice such a long time ago, it was it predated like um Clio and my case, and so I was just using Google Workspace and I don't have a volume practice, and so it just always worked very well for that. So I can do that.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Um I use the dictation tools a lot. I use um Whisper Whisper Flow or Whisper and then I sometimes the audio tools associated with the other platforms. Um I'm trying to think. What what does cowork do for you? So I've just started using it. One of the things it did, so one of my toxic traits is that my my files are a terrible mess, my folders on my machine. It's funny, my late husband and I used to always have this kind of argument because he was always messy in the house, but he couldn't get over how messy my folders were on my laptop. He's like, why don't you go crazy seeing that? It organized all of the folders. I had about a thousand, I had like a thousand things on my desktop that weren't organized anywhere. And I asked it to put it into folders and it organized them into folders, and then it put um by topic, and it came up with like 10 different subjects of topics that I had on the machine, and then it put all the stuff in there, and now I just I go and open up my laptop, and there's just the 10 folders with the documents in them sorted by by document type, by PDF and Word. I mean, it really it did that. So I and I know for people who are power users of it, that's just very basic. I've been trying to get it to do, um, set it up to do updates. I also use Clot Cowork for discovery. So I keep a lot of my file files on on box, and what it can do is it can create a spreadsheet with links to the documents. And then it also, I've been testing it on this, on actually doing in the spreadsheet having a summary of the document too. I the first time I tried it was like two months ago. I asked it to summarize like a hundred documents that were linked in a spreadsheet. It didn't do a great job, but that doesn't mean it's not going to do a good job in two months from now. So that's something I need to look at again. So it helps with that. And then I've been using Claude Projects to do um to do some routine writing that I have. I have a project set up, and when I have to write these different memos, it just does it automatically based on the factual information that I upload into it.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

This is these are gonna be some questions that I hope people find useful. In Claude Co-work or Gemini, and I think Gemini, a lot of people are already paying for Google Workspace. So Gemini is part of that tool. You have it available to you. Gemini or Google Workspace already has confidentiality. They already have your client emails, so you're you're good to use it. Um can you connect Gemini to your other tools, like like Google Docs or practice management software or box and have Gemini do work in other systems?

SPEAKER_00 16:40

So I don't know if Gemini can do that. I found Gemini to be, and again, this is something that I looked at. I the other problem with me is I get frustrated very easily. So if something doesn't do something, I just like go away from it and don't pay attention to it. I don't even check back. The last times I've checked Gemini, I've had trouble integrating it with my email. But I do am, I am able to connect Claude Cowork through the MCP model context protocol connectors. So I'm able to connect it to my box files and to my Calendly file, my Calendly and to my Gmail and have it like pick out emails that address, you know, if I'm looking for an attachment that I sent or or go through and organize the discovery. So it can do that already. I'm just I'm not sure if Gemini can do that because I haven't checked back to see if it can even you would expect it to do that with Google Tools. You'd be expected to be able to like go into Google Scholar and do legal research or something, but I don't think they're that well coordinated yet. So there must be some Google plan of bringing them together at some point.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

You mentioned legal research. There are an endless number of people, lawyers, who are being sanctioned for using AI and having AI get things wrong and people not being able to catch it. And and I'm saying it that way specifically because um lawyers are not trying to put hallucinated cases into their briefs. They might get a draft of a brief that somebody else did that they relied on that has hallucinated cases. It's hard to catch every single error, which is why so many lawyers are getting themselves into trouble. What is your best advice for avoiding that?

SPEAKER_00 18:29

So it just, I mean, I agree with that because research is very messy, but I think these things even happened before AI. I know that like when I'm doing research or writing a brief, I'm cutting and pasting different chunks from different places in a notepad or something, and sometimes the site gets disconnected or I delete something and then a new site gets associated with it. But I think that, you know, so so I think I I personally think these problems existed before AI, maybe not with like flatly made up cases, but with miscitations or mischaracterizations, and nobody cared because nobody was reading the cases, everybody was careless. So um I think now I think that you just have to for a final check, there just has to be somebody who can do a final check who isn't using AI and who's just, you know, manually checking all the cases and seeing what they say. I think that's really the only way to do things. And then of course, if you're working with other people, you would need them to tell you to disclose to you if they've used AI so that at least you know to look more carefully or ask them to verify it themselves. I mean, I think with putting those checks in place, you can generally avoid the mistakes, though. I mean, it is it is nightmarish because I'm now always so paranoid that I'm gonna make some kind of mistake and just be humiliated when it could just be really completely inadvertent. Because like I said, you're when you're doing research and you're working quickly, it's all over the place. And even when you do check, then there are different drafts and you know, things get edited, and sometimes a different uh new site comes out. So I'm not sure it's I I guess that's really the best you can do.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

The standard is now higher, a lot higher. So, and and this has happened to a lawyer um in my office. She relied on a law clerk who was a licensed attorney, appellate attorney in another state for a lot of her appellate drafting. She filed a document with her name on it, and there were hallucinated cases. And the Court of Appeals gave her an order to appear and said, Show up, tell us what happened, figure, you know, um, what do you have to say for yourself? And and she's like, you know, here's what happens. And they were like, go check everything else. And in the process of checking everything else, she still missed things because I think that that if it's wrong, it's hard to know and to see everything that's wrong. But one of the things I have been doing to check, you know, just to provide more checks, is telling, putting these briefs into different um AI and saying, find me everything that's wrong. Find me hallucinated cases, find me every case that might be mischaracterized. And so I'm I'm using AI to help me find errors because my brain isn't isn't as good as the AI.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Yeah, no, you expect the hallucinations to stand right out at you, like to be like, you know, a case name, Superman versus the Crusaders. And it's a regular case name and it's a regular citation. But it might be like I caught one hallucination that I was I I got the AI to hallucinate, or I I got to see the hallucination because it was from the Fifth Circuit, and I knew this type of case just from my experience doesn't typically get filed in the Fifth Circuit. And it wasn't a made up case, but that's because I had some kind of background. They don't stand out to you. I notice also they go, they really go fast and loose. The AI goes fast and loose with the quotes. So a lot of the quoted material, it's not made up, but it's just they just contracted it or they've taken words out to make the sentence make sense, but that may change the meaning of the quotes. So I find that the quotation things are red flags too.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Yeah. Yes. Um Claude with the legal AI plugin did a better job at finding mistakes, mischaracterizations than Clio work did, which was very interesting to me.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Well, that is interesting. So Clio work is the one with Velux or Yes. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Yeah. Which is why I think, you know, using using different models, using and like the floor has gotten higher. So all of us are now held to a higher standard because of where we're at in this moment. And it means things like extra checks, multiple models, an intern or a law clerk or somebody checking sites and quotes. And then, of course, having the experience to know I just know something feels off, which is what you have, is really useful. But not everybody has that.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Right. And especially uh with new law clerks. And I know I had a law clerk who I asked to prove something that I had done with AI. And like he was he was astounded because he couldn't believe how wrong it was and he didn't expect it. And I think he was flustered because he was probably, you know, inclined to rely on it because it looked very realistic. And so um, yeah, but no, that's that's definitely where things are. And I I guess this has got to sort itself out over time. I mean, I the tools do keep improving. I guess I've been I've heard somebody say that the case, the number of like made up cases has gone down, but the number of like mischaracterized cases has gone up.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

So it's evolving. It's evolving. Yes, yes, exactly. It's uh, you know, you just your diligence as a lawyer if you're filing anything, especially, you know, in federal court or or you know, we're family law attorneys where at that circuit court or superior court level, it doesn't come up as much. But if you're filing in federal court or in a appellals appeals court, you have I just don't think you can be careful enough. Yeah. But if but you're kind of it would be silly not to use AI because it makes your arguments better. It makes your drafting better. Have you found that?

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Yeah, no, absolutely. And a lot of times what I can do if I'm writing something under the gun or have to add something in at the last minute, I might just like draft something and then just say, here's a case, I want to make a paragraph that makes the argument that this happened based on this case, draft that paragraph for me. And they can draft it faster than I could, and it's gonna be more persuasive than mine, and then I can play around with that. So I definitely feel like it can it helps get through the stuff much more quickly.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

So yeah. What do you think is going to happen? What do you uh let's just do some future predicting? Where do you think the state of things look in one year for solos, for mid-sized firms, and for large firms?

SPEAKER_00 25:12

So that's a really good question. I guess in a year, I think with large firms, I think there will they be using some of the enterprise tools and their clients will expect them to be using those tools. Um, and I think that we will at larger firms start to see reduction in number of lawyers hired. I don't think it's going to be extreme. I think there may be instead of law firms hiring like an entry-level class of 50, it might be 35 or something like that. So I think it'll see like those slower reductions. There doesn't appear to be any uh any relief on the rate front for larger firms, and I'm not sure why that is. For solo and small firms, I think um it's it's there's there's such diversity amongst solos and smalls, but I think that the firms that haven't adopted any kind of AI are gonna start to feel the heat at that point. I think that for the past three years, people have been trying to figure out like exactly how to use AI. And so there's been a lot of transitions. So I don't think the late adopters have really suffered much. There hasn't been like a lot of downward pressure on rates, so people aren't having to, you know, to charge less or to use AI to charge less. But I think in a year, I think that firms that haven't adopted are really gonna feel the heat. And I think they're gonna um find themselves maybe in in a hole that's a little bit harder to to dig out of and may have to start to look for ways to be able to somehow convey the knowledge that they have to like AI users or like merge or do something to work with them because I think it's gonna be harder for them to keep up. And I think clients, you know, clients are gonna start to expect um more things. Clients are gonna become more accustomed to dealing with AI receptionists like the ones that you're using. Um, they're gonna start to expect, you know, some sort of AI-related um like correspondence or re responses or assistance with um putting documents together. So I think that firms that aren't using AI in a year are gonna find themselves really at a disadvantage with a lot of clients who become very accustomed to it. Even even if they don't know exactly that it's AI behind something, they become very accustomed to just like now everybody wants to pay with a credit credit card or pay electronically, people don't pay their legal fees by check. And I think clients are gonna start to expect, you know, up more frequent updates and better service that AI can provide. So I think in a year we're gonna start to see sort of the splitting up point, and then maybe like in five years, like firms that haven't adopted I think are just gonna fall by the waist. I I just don't see, I just don't see a survival path um at that at that point.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

And do you think prices are going to fall?

SPEAKER_00 28:02

I always like to say that they will. It doesn't make sense that they won't, but they that doesn't that doesn't seem to happen. And I'm not exactly sure. I don't know why that is, um, why that why that hasn't happened, but I would like to say that there will be more competition, and at least for some categories of cases, you'll be able to get, you know, very high quality legal service with an attorney involved for less than what it costs now. But I just think that that's gonna happen very slowly, just because I think there's gonna be hurdles to firms adopting AI. And and because I feel like in a lot of ways, there is sort of a pricing cart cartel amongst lawyers. They see what other people are charging per hour and they keep their rates at that level. There's not a lot of incentive for lawyers to be competitive on pricing either. So I would like to see it happen because it needs to happen. There's a lot of people who can't afford attorneys, but I'm not sure I see that going in that direction.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Last question, but related. Um, do you think that outside investment, things like the ABSs that we have in Arizona or non-lawyer ownership and investment of money from outside lawyers, is a good thing or a bad thing? And do you think it will happen?

SPEAKER_00 29:24

So I don't necessarily think it's good or bad. I'm not sure that it's necessary. I know that I and most of the examples you do hear about outside investment do tend to be, you know, have the negative have negative repercussions. And what people don't realize, I mean, this happened before. There's this whole law review article about the mortgage foreclosure crisis when there were these firms that were doing the robo signings for the banks and basically foreclosed, it was a foreclosure mills that were taking people out of their houses. And it was actually solos and small firms that fought that off, like, you know, using their own their own skills. So we've seen what can and those were like those foreclosure mills were kind of outside investment sort of operations. So that's a very uh example, that's an example of like where things can can go wrong. Um, so I guess from what I've seen, it doesn't seem to work very well, but there may be situations where it's something that that could work. Um I think I don't know if we'll see it happen overtly, but we may see it happen in the way it's happening now, where people are outsourcing different parts of their practice to those um MS, those service organizations and having them operate it for them and um and sort of and working that way. But I think, I mean, I think it's really important for there always to be a solo, an completely independent solo and small firm voice within the profession to speak out when things are bad and to be able to take cases that look like losers that maybe aren't just to advance the law or because you think it's the right thing to do. I mean, and we saw that there was a New York Times article about, you know, with this administration, it was solos and smalls who were coming forward to do the challenges because the big firms weren't speaking up. So I do think that no matter what happens, it would be a very bad situation if all solo and small firms if if they all became back by private equity because those answer to profit and to um they may not be as uh excited about pursuing cases for for the uh the public impact that they have. So I think that overall, like long term, it would be very bad for the profession. And I and I guess for people who, you know, outside investment has always been touted as a way to um improve or encourage access to justice. And that's just I mean, really anybody who believed that, you sell them a bridge or something because that that it seemed pretty clear that that was not going to be the uh was not going to be the outcome besides but behind the outside investments.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

I mean the the only example we really have, I think, is legal zoom. And so did legal zoom increase access to justice?

SPEAKER_00 32:12

I mean legal zoom is going to be overtaken by AI. I don't uh if if if it did, it was very it was very short term. I yeah, so I it legal Zoom seems very uh very 2000 these days.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Well, right, right. But you know, we were having the same discussions about access to justice in the early 2000s when when I was first getting licensed and in the 2010s. And in some ways, I I feel like there is more more access to justice. The self-help centers are far better. The information available online is better. There is like more access to information and help and groups and support groups and people crowdsourcing, but it hasn't had anything to do with the practice of law. It hasn't reduced demand, it hasn't changed the way lawyers work. It's just that you've got like two separate worlds almost, the DIY world and the legal practice world.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

Yeah, no, that's a good point. That does make sense. I mean, people do have more access to resources now. So um it's just that lawyers have nothing to do with it. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

Very interesting. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and for sharing your time and your knowledge and really your service to lawyers these last 20 years. You've been just a great resource. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. And um, thank you for all the interesting things that you're that you're doing and talking about the stuff that you're doing at your firm on uh on TikTok is where I see you.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

So it's a good time. It's a good time. All right, well, have a wonderful weekend and we'll see you again soon. Okay, great. Thanks. Thanks for joining me on Law Lab. If today's episode gave you something to think about or something to act on, I'd love to hear from you. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share the show with someone building the future of law. Until next time, keep experimenting, keep evolving, and I'll see you back in the lab.