Bonus: Inside LEAP AI - Use cases, benefits and security

In this bonus episode of This Week in Family Law, we dive into the AI technology in LEAP Legal Software, including use cases for tools such as LawY, Matter AI and Ruffle. We also discuss the security and privacy guardrails set up around the artificial intelligence in LEAP to ensure it meets the strict regulations of the legal industry. LEAP's AI is purpose-built for law firms ensuring it is more accurate and more secure than open or off-the-shelf AI software.



Chapters:
0:00 - Introduction
2:17 - Security and Privacy
6:20 - Benefits of AI for Family Lawyers
12:51 - LawY - AI Legal Research
15:01 - Matter AI
18:13 - AI Prompts
21:49 - AI in Balance Sheet+
24:32 - AI in Parenting Calendar+
26:20 - Ruffle - Reviewing Financial Disclosure with AI
29:49 - The Future of Legal AI




Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for general information and discussion purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice, and should not be relied on as such. The views expressed are general in nature and may not apply to your specific circumstances. You should seek independent legal advice before acting on any information discussed.



About the podcast:
This Week in Family Law is the go-to podcast for busy Australian family lawyers looking to stay updated without the overwhelm. Whether you’re a family lawyer in Australia, a practitioner working towards CPD, or simply interested in family law, this podcast delivers clear, practical insights in a bite-sized format. Subscribe to stay up to date with the latest developments in Australian family law. New episodes drop every Monday.



Topics discussed:
- LEAP AI
- Security and Privacy
- Benefits of AI for Family Lawyers
- Conducting Legal Research using AI
- Case Law Research with AI
- Matter Insights with AI
- Searching your Matter in seconds with AI
- Drafting documents with AI Prompts
- Automatically filling out your Balance Sheet
- Asking AI about Parenting Orders in your matter
- Reviewing Financial Disclosure with AI
- The Future of AI in the legal industry
- How AI impacts training junior lawyers



Links:
To learn more about LEAP AI, visit:
https://www.leaplegalsoftware.com/au/features/legal-ai/




Submit a question or provide feedback:
Email: familylawpodcast@leap.com.au
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LEAPAu
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@leap.family.law1 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leapfamilylaw/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to a bonus episode of This Week in Family Law. My name is Jenna Downey, and my co-host today is Brendan Chu.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

It's good to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Great to have you. For this episode today, Brendan and I wanted to talk to you a little bit about products, which is normally something that we don't do in our podcasts, we intentionally don't do in our podcasts. But due to many comments we've received asking for more information in relation to those products, we thought we'd bring you this episode as a special bonus. We will also briefly address AI more generally and the security around AI. So if you're not interested in the products, then you might still be interested to hear about our perspective on AI use in family law proceedings as well. Brent and I are both family lawyers who transitioned over to legal tech a few years ago. So I feel like we do have quite a unique perspective in terms of family law practice and then also the use of technology and AI within practice as well. Over the last few years that we have worked at Leap, AI in particular has transitioned a lot. I feel like when we when I first started, in particular in 2023, most people had only just heard of AI and what it could potentially do, but there was a lot of scepticism around it. And I feel like even you, Brendan, joining a little bit later, it was still the the case. Up until maybe six months ago, when people became a little bit more open-minded in relation to it. We definitely lived the pain points that AI could help to improve, and also general products that we have worked on could help to improve as well. So I again, in terms of informing the products that do use AI, I feel like we've been invaluable to be able to provide that insight to help family law practitioners improve the efficiency in the work in what they do and do their job a lot quicker leveraging technology where they can. Before we get into the products, as I mentioned, Brendan is going to touch briefly on the security and safety measures Leap has in place when using AI. And I'll ask him to do that now.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Jenna. Yeah, so one of the biggest concerns, having spoken to a lot of practitioners out there and actually in practice, a lot of the concerns that they have around the use of AI is really confidentiality, privacy, accuracy, and look quite rightly so. We work in a very high-stakes environment, high pressure, deadlines are always flying about, and one misstep could really mean the difference between a learning moment and a regulator visiting your office or a regulator reaching out to you in the worst case. So at Leap, we don't implement AI casually or haphazardly. There are a lot of safeguards around security, data handling, and the verification processes to ensure that practitioners can actually use these tools responsibly and confidently. And our focus has always really been on building AI that augments and supports legal practitioners without actually compromising on their professional obligations and confidentiality, because we know that AI is not here to replace a lawyer. It's actually here to help them do their job better. So making the lawyer lawyer better, really, is the underlying principle here. So right off the bat, I do want to set the stage and be crystal clear that there is a big difference between what I call off-the-shelf AI, which is designed to do a lot of different things, sort of a jack-of-all trades, master of none style of approach versus leaps AI in terms of how we build it from the ground up to be very specific and targeted towards legal practice and often very targeted to specific areas of law as well. So off-the-shelf AI, just for those who are not fully aware of what that is or um what what that entails, is really anything available to your everyday consumers. So things like the free version of Chat GPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, stuff that sort of comes bundled in to your um existing apps. I know Adobe has one, for example, that can do a lot of different things. They're marketed as being able to do a whole wide range of things, but none of those are actually specific to legal practice. Um they can be free versions, as I just mentioned, or even paid versions in some cases. But the bottom line is that they're not built specifically for legal practice, and they're not subject to the same safety and security measures as the ones that Leap has essentially on offer at the moment. Um, and one of the key distinguishing features, which is often overlooked, is actually we have an enterprise-level agreement with the foundational AI model providers that expressly state that there is zero data retention. And this is really important because that means that no confidential leap data or client information about the firm or about the firm's clients are stored by the model provider. And this is actually not something that's always available to your everyday consumer, even on a paid plan. So even if you buy the highest or most expensive paid plan with OpenAI or Anthropic or Google for all the AI features, you might not actually have access to the zero data retention terms. They will they will say we won't train on your data, but they won't actually expressly say that there will be no data retained whatsoever, which is something that we can actually confirm that we do have because we have these enterprise level agreements. So that's a big distinguishing factor, which is often unknown or overlooked because I know there's a lot of conversation out about training, but not enough about data retention.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

It's a really good point though, because you would have clients thinking, and clients I mean our lawyer clients, you would have lawyers thinking that they could just use a paid version of a particular app, like AI-generated chat. But it's very it that is still very different to what we can offer through Leap.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Aaron Powell That's right, exactly. And that's again a common misconception is that, oh, well, I just use the paid version of ChatGPT, so I'm safe. But it goes just beyond, again, that training aspect. There's more to it. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Um yeah, so actually well, that out of the way. I think Jenna, you wanted to mention something about the pain points.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah, I did. Thank you. So before we get into the tech itself and the products that we've developed, I think it is important to explain the reality of practicing family law. Um, and I know a lot of our listeners are family lawyers, so I'm sure there would be some relating to what I'm about to say. But then for those practic uh for those people who are listening who aren't practicing family lawyers, I think this would be helpful for you to hear just to give context to where we're coming from with a lot of the tech that has been developed. Family law is an incredibly document-heavy area of law. And on any given day, you could be drafting letters, um, reviewing disclosure, sending client emails, preparing mediation material or drafting court documents. I feel like that is a big chunk of what we do. You're also constantly trying to manage large volumes of information across very emotionally and complex matter types, dealing with find what what are going to be the finances of the parties after separation, what's that going to look like? Also the parenting arrangements, too, and there's other factors that do come into play. The hours can be significant, especially leading up to mediations, hearing, or urgent applications and weekend work, late nights. It does certainly happen.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

It's not a nine-to-five job, as we say, right? Just because it hits five o'clock, it doesn't mean your clients' lives stop in time. They're still ongoing.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Yeah, yeah. And I think lawyers obviously wear a certain type of personality a lot of the time, and we do want to do the best for our clients, and and we don't want to let things slip. So we do do the hours needed to be able to do the work that needs to be done, and this can then create stress and burnout in a lot of um cases as well. At the same time, client communication is one of the most important parts of our job, and speaking to clients, whether that's face-to-face, online, being able to manage clients' expectations, having really good communication with them, telling them about what's going to happen within their matter, it's still such an essential part of what we do. Clients need guidance, transparency, and reassurance during what is often one of the most difficult times in their lives. So when we talk about AI, the real value isn't replacing lawyers, it's reducing the administrative tasks. So those document-heavy tasks that I mentioned before, to allow more time for lawyers to spend speaking to their clients, advising them, thinking strategically, advocating and practice the advocacy side of things as well. So doing that more effectively and less time drafting from what is a lot of the time a blank page. We could use AI to be able to at least get a first draft to then be reviewed. So I just wanted to make that point before we get into the the products and the real benefits behind them.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

That's right. Like like you said, it's it's enabling the lawyer to do the things that only a human can do. Like the empathy, the strategic thinking, the advocacy, stuff that AI cannot do. Yeah. So it's really just sort of going, well, AI is good at doing one thing, let's make it do that, and let's free up the human to do the things that the human can only only the human can do.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Yeah. And I don't think clients, and now I'm referring to end user clients or clients of lawyers, I don't think they would necessarily mind that they would probably prefer their lawyer to use AI to draft documents as long as they're checked and they are correct. And then the client having the lawyer more available to them to have these conversations and to be able to communicate more effectively with them, which I'm sure there's been a lot of occasions where clients have tried to talk to their lawyer, but they're so busy, whether that's on their case or another case, and they're preparing, for instance, for a hearing for that. And then they can't speak to them for a few days because the lawyer is so under the pump with that type of thing.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

I think we're all guilty of that as well. And you know, you see a phone call come up and you're like, oh, I can't take that right now. I know this client really needs me, but I can't take the that call because I'm busy trying to draft this. Yes. And um, it's just as you said, it's just the clients there as long as they're as long as the documents that are being prepared are checked and are accurate, I'm sure they're going to be okay with it. In fact, um when they see their legal bills, if they're if they're lowered because the lawyer was actually more efficient and had to spend less time on it, therefore it was cheap for the client. I'm sure they'd actually be quite happy about that, actually. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Yeah. Um I mentioned before, I so I've been at Leap since uh mid-2023. And around that time, AI was becoming a major topic of conversation. For many people, AI seemed to appear overnight with the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, so about six-ish months before I I'd started. But AI itself has existed for decades in different forms, and that can include predictive text, recommendation algorithms, spam filters, voice assistance, automation software as well. So I think when people hear AI, some people do actually think it's this new technology that has been built, but that's not necessarily the case. What has changed after 2023 was the accessibility of generative AI, particularly through Chat GPT, because I feel like that was the first forum that most people had heard of generative AI through. And suddenly people could interact with AI conversationally, and businesses started exploring how it could generally, genuinely improve workflows as well. It obviously became a focus for us to leverage the benefits of AI for our practitioners, and that has really informed the work that we have done over the last couple of years. Even though back then there was a lot, there seemed to be a lot of resistance to it. People are slowly getting their head around the benefits of AI and the safety of AI and knowing that it is safe to use.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

And um that has certainly helped with adoption of a lot of the products that we have been working on over the last few years.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Yeah, there's definitely been a shift in the attitude towards AI, I think, especially in the last six to twelve months, more so in the last six months. Um, having spoken to a lot of practitioners, um, they've actually themselves have said, look, you know, 12 months ago I have never touched AI and I was afraid of it. But now seeing it in action and actually hearing from other practitioners who have used it, they're starting to become more willing to give it a go. And when they do try it themselves, they go, Oh, actually, this wasn't actually the big scary mountain I thought it was. It was a small hill I had to get over. But now that I'm over it, I'm willing to actually incorporate that into my workflow.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

And I can see the benefits of using it. One of the first products developed by within um LEAP internally was LORY, which is the which is LEAP's legal AI research tool. General AI platforms alone weren't sufficient for reliable legal research, and we identified that pretty early on. So LAWI was designed specifically for lawyers to do legal research with a lawyer verification process built into it. And this pain point addresses the obvious issue of anyone who's ever done legal research in their practice where it is very time-consuming, and you can't necessarily surface the information that you want very easily as well. So you might spend hours searching through Osley or Jade, reading multiple judgments as well, trying to locate relevant cases for your matter. AI can now search across large volumes of material within moments and surface the most relevant information more effectively. That doesn't remove the need for legal judgment or knowing what you need to research for in the first place, but it does dramatically reduce the time spent finding that information. So that's a it's a huge win for lawyers to have that type of tool available to better search through many, many cases, many, many judgments, and trying to just find that one golden nugget that you might need for a particular matter.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Yeah, yeah. The way I like to describe law-wise, actually I use an analogy to construction, right? You can dig a hole with a shovel, with one person digging a hole for many, many hours, even days to try and make uh a hole in the ground, or you can bring in some equipment to excavate that hole much quicker. The key element is that the human is controlling both pieces of equipment at all times, the shovel or the excavator, but one will do the job a lot quicker. And he in the excavator in this case is actually law-wide. The human is controlling it as using it and actually verifying it, um, whether it's through self-verification or using the built-in verification function. Um but the human element isn't lost, but the job is getting done a lot quicker than the other.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Yeah, the tool they're using is more effective. That's right. That's right. Yeah, I like that.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Um and so building on the conversation from Law Y, um, another feature that's been really popular with lawyers and in law firms, not just lawyers, but everyone in law firms really, um, is Matter AI. And this is actually something that Leap has worked really hard on over the number of over a number of years. Um and in short, like Law Y, uh, Matter AI is designed to again be that set of tools, uh, that that tool set for a lawyer and uh and staff at a law firm to do their jobs more efficiently. But instead of looking externally for legal research, Matter AI looks internally at the file to give the law firm staff uh insights into the matter, to surface things that may have been buried under mountains and mountains of correspondence, which is pretty common in family law because you know there's so many documents going back and forth. It's emails, letters, court documents, file notes, reports, everything. Like we have one of the, I guess, most document-heavy areas of law when you think about the number of documents that go through a lawyer's uh computer on a day-to-day basis. So um anyone who's worked on a family law file knows how time consuming it is to locate a particular piece of correspondence or some information that's buried in that mountain. Um and you know, I myself, I've embarked on a journey to try and find that needle in a haystack, and I can tell you it's really a a huge waste of time because uh my client expects me to know that. But often I've I'm working on you know 20, 30, 40 files at a time with varying levels of activity and and complexity. It's impossible for me as a human to retain, oh, I know exactly where that document is, or I know exactly where that piece of instructions that came from a client's email in that particular matter is. It's just not humanly possible.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Aaron Ross Powell And no matter how organized you are with your file, which presumably most people have electronic files at this point, you you just can't keep on top of it a lot of the time, or it's still tricky to find documents. So this is just so beneficial to be able to surface what you need within an instant.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

That's right. That that that time, because time is one of the most precious resources a family lawyer can have. Um and being able to save on that time is just it's worth it's worth more than uh than I can actually put into words, really. It's just it's an immensely powerful benefit to uh to family lawyers. And I guess this time issue, it it's a problem that surfaces a broader issue experienced by every lawyer. Um and I think when we when we picture family law cases, they're they're they're files that are incredibly large. And humans, we're we're designed, we're not designed, we are inherently good at being strategic, we're good at advocating and good at being empathetic, but we're not computers, we're not good at processing large amounts of information in in a short amount of time. Whereas on the other hand, AI, as we mentioned before, is very good at doing that. It's it's it's good at doing um certain things really, really well. And and and one of those things that it does really, really well is actually just being able to read through a huge amount of information in one hit and actually surface that one key bit of detail that you're looking for. So it's like if you think uh we're we're putting the best person or the best tool for the right job, really. You know, we can again keep the humans doing what they're really good at doing while we let AI do the things that AI is really good at doing. Absolutely. And that's what Matter AI really is about.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Absolutely. So we've talked about research and we've talked about searching. Now, one of the other key things that AI can do really good at is drafting documents as well. Um we have developed AI prompts for drafting complex documents. These combine Matter AI with lawyer-designed prompts to generate draft outputs for review, and that includes, I'm thinking of the list of documents that uh list of prompts, sorry, that we have available. It can include affidavits, it can include subpoenas, letters, file notes, briefs to counsel, um, other common summary documents. Again, it can summarize really well any information that you need. And these aren't simple prompts. For these complex documents like an affidavit, these are these are very extensive prompts, pages and pages and pages long, to be able to get the information that you need and put it in a form that is suited to whatever document that you're drafting. Um, the important thing here is that AI isn't simply drafting blindly, it's reviewing the matter, um, identifying the relevant documents that would be relevant to this particular task, getting the context, and then generating a draft document that the lawyer can review and refine. So that again, lawyer verification, you get the draft, and then you are to review it and make sure it is correct, it is accurate. Even when generation of certain outputs can take some time, and I think we've both seen sometimes when we want to prompt, it can take minutes, up to 10 minutes, sometimes longer. But you wait that time and you're going to get a really good first draft of quite a complex document as opposed to starting from scratch.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

That's right. And it's not time you're spending doing absolute nothing. That's time you could be doing something else as well. That you can actually do more in the same amount of time because you're running these things in parallel with what you'd normally do as a human. So you could be drafting an email to a client, could be a completely different matter, even, drafting an email to a client about their initial consult or some next steps while you wait for this to generate, and then you have basically you've done two things in the same amount of time. So you're not, you're not, it's not an opportunity cost that most people think it is. It's not like, oh, well, this is 10 minutes, like I'm completely that productive. No, you can be productive just completely elsewhere. You can be doing something else in that same matter or in or working on an entirely different matter during that time as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Yeah, yeah. And I know when we use AI, I speak to people around the office and I'll see them at their lunch break and they'll say, Oh, I've just asked, you know, AI to do something for me. I just thought I'd um come and have my lunch while it's working away, it's doing work. But they could be there at their desk doing other tasks if they wanted to as well. But it's really cool how it just it just does these things in the background whilst uh uh someone can go off and do something different. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Yeah, and like you said, actually have their lunch break because often I have to skip my lunch break. And um it's it's it's probably important that we do have our lunch break and regular breaks too. So hopefully, if if nothing else, that 10 minutes could be go for a walk, go get some sun, go get a coffee, do something else to let you, I guess, relax a little bit because family law is such a high stress environment.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Aaron Powell Yeah, and back to the the point that we were making earlier on about trying to reduce the stress and the burnout in the profession because it is a very difficult practice area. Even lawyering as a profession is very difficult. So to be able to create some a little bit more space to be able to have a break, I think is always a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Yeah, that breathing room is just so important.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

So we're going to move on to more so some more products which we have selectively integrated AI into. These were originally developed in a more traditional Way, but we have seen some benefits that AI can bring to these products. We've been really selective in what we do with AI. We don't implement AI for the sake of it. We do it because we genuinely think it's going to improve what we have developed.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

That's right. And often a lot of these actually come from as suggestions from practitioners who have used some of these features before AI was actually implemented into them. And they said to us, look, it'd actually be really great if it could do X, Y, and Z. So we've actually taken that feedback on board and we've actually made ways to sprinkle bits of AI where it's appropriate. Like you said, it's not implemented for the sake of it. We're not putting AI blanketly into everything just because it's the new big thing. It's because practitioners will genuinely find news from it. So the first one is actually Balance Sheet Plus. And for those who are unfamiliar with Balance Sheet Plus, it's a smart balance sheet that helps lawyers not only complete balance sheets and replicate that useful information in other court forms that require information from the balance sheet. It lets lawyers also formulate proposals and settlement scenarios and also prepare the first draft of a property order. Now, from the beginning, we've had feedback from clients or from lawyers rather to say, well, how do I fill out this balance sheet? Is there an easier way to do it rather than doing it manually? And we agree because typing is really just typing. It's not really lawyering. And so we've actually added the ability for lawyers to actually complete the first draft of the balance sheet using information that actually already exists on the matter. So using the power of AR, you can actually use balance sheet plus and have that fill out the first draft of the balance sheet using intake notes that you took from your first meeting with your client or existing balance sheets or existing financial disclosure because all that information is actually already in the in the matter. It's just waiting for someone to take it out of its current form and put into the balance sheet. And actually we've we've AI is actually quite good at doing that. So we've implemented that, and that's been one of the biggest um updates to Balance Sheet Plus that has come through in the recent months.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

It's such a widely enjoyed tool using Balance Sheet Plus. And we've loved having built that tool from scratch, we've loved clients using it, and then to be able to take it to that next step of including AI, as you mentioned, to even make it more efficient and easier, then that's just significantly improved what we've been able to deliver.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

That's right. And just making again, saving a lawyer's time and enhancing their experience with existing stuff as well is also very important.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Another tool we have developed is Parenting Calendar Plus, which is a visual tool for mapping parenting arrangements and also generating parenting orders as well. Similar to Balance Sheet Plus, in the sense that it is a way that it documents information and then you can it's got that order generation piece to make it much easier for lawyers to be able to come up with a set of orders that has been agreed on for a particular matter. One particularly useful AI feature is automatically identifying school holiday dates based on the relevant school system or even specific private schools because I think I know that was a big pain point for me at least. Just trying to identify, okay, what school holidays apply to this particular matter. And sometimes it can be different if different children go to different schools. And it's a very manual task of having to look up those dates. So to be able to have that input into the calendar for you, I think that's a huge win for lawyers in terms of time. And then also having an AI chat available to be able to interact with the calendar and ask it questions to again surface information that a lawyer might want to know.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Yeah, it's really it's really actually quite handy. And I've tried it myself and I was quite pleasantly surprised at what it could do. So I actually asked a question where um I said, look, what's the longest amount of time each parent goes without seeing the children? It was actually able to tell me down to how many hours, like it was like 12 days and seven hours is the biggest gap between the father seeing the children. So being able to be able to actually see that, it's something I wouldn't be able to manually calculate. I'd probably sit there and spend half an hour trying to get it, and I'd probably still get the numbers wrong. Um whereas this was actually something that was able to surface that information, which normally isn't available, not readily accessible for me. So that was something that was pleasantly surprising.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Another very, very cool feature product, I should say, is Ruffle. And this is our bank statement analysis tool. And going back to being able to ingest large volumes of information and bringing the information that you want to the forefront for a matter is vital and it's done so easily within Ruffle. Um Ruffle uses AI to not only analyse bank statements but then also categorize expenditure with significant detail and then also reporting as well. So it can help generate sections of the financial statements relating to expenditure and then identify patterns that would otherwise take enormous amounts of time to manually review. For example, when there's been allegations of gambling or inappropriate spending, Ruffle categorizes that expenditure and provides it in a nice little report for the practitioner to see, which could essentially take hours, if not days, to actually compile that.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

And it and it does it specifically for what family law practitioners might look out for in family law matters.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

That's right. And um, interestingly, the person who first built Ruffle, um, their their partner is actually a family lawyer. So um a lot of decisions about how Ruffle was designed uh was informed from a family lawyer's perspective from day one. So it's one of the, again, going back to purpose-built tools versus just off-the-shelf products. There's a very clear difference here in terms of how the design, the philosophy, how it's how it functions, um, and what it's really ultimately meant for. Um Ruffle was a perfect example of this is purpose-built for what a family lawyer needs and what they want to achieve.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

I remember in practice, clients would come into me and they'd have a big bunch of bank statements and they would say, I think my partners, and there'd be some sort of allegation. And then you would say to them, Okay, I can I can look through it. Like if you could do it yourself and you go through and highlight the transactions, or I could do it, but it's going to cost you X amount of money for me to do it. And clients would certainly reflect on that, and it would be then difficult for them to make a decision as, okay, is it do I spend thousands of dollars for my lawyer to actually review this information, or do I not do it? And I think a lot of the time when costs were involved, they wouldn't do it. So it is, it definitely provides a bit more access to the information that they wouldn't otherwise be able to necessarily draw from bank bank statements so easily as well.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Yeah, it's it's definitely hard to justify the cost when you're a client going in and seeing your lawyer and going, I think something's happening, but I don't know if that's true. And I'm not really sure whether I should spend two dollars to perhaps find one because that might not be the might not be the best use of my money that I've set aside to actually pay for my lawyer. And and that cost is such a big pressure on often. Uh usually it's it's it's someone who doesn't have access to funds and and doesn't have a whole picture, the full picture of what's going on from the final financial situation. Um, it's very difficult for them to say, yes, go ahead and actually run that and and and go through that task of manually going through every single line item. Whereas in this case, Ruffle can do that for you as a lawyer and you can then provide that service to every matter, not just the ones who can afford it.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Yeah. Yeah, it definitely adds to access to justice piece.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

Now, Brendan, I think you were going to talk to us a bit about the future of AI and and what you see AI is going to be doing moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

Yeah, well, I don't have access to a crystal ball, unfortunately. I wish I did. But um I as I said before at the start of this episode, look, I think the key theme here is that AI works best when it's working together with lawyers, not against lawyers. Um so with the features we build, certainly, um, one of the things that we keep in our minds is that lawyers still need to be thinking critically and strategically, be empathetic and actually apply their experience and expertise. Um but I think where the real benefit and and where AI will see a lot of use, especially for lawyers, is where it's reducing that administrative time or time spent on tasks that aren't really considered lawyering. So, you know, copying information, reading through voluminous data, um and and and just doing stuff that you don't necessarily need to be a lawyer to do. So AI will probably shine the most in those areas because that's again where you know lawyers don't want to be spending their time. You know, you become a lawyer because you want to do the lawyering, you don't become a lawyer because you want to type documents out. So in the end of the day, I think where it's going to shine is really doing those repetitive, mundane admin style tasks.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Something that our our clients, so our lawyers say is that they're scared of the impact this is going to have on junior practitioners and how traditionally lawyers would learn the you know 101 of family law and drafting documents. Do you have a view on that?

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Well, I think well, my view can pretty much be summed up by um a statement I usually like to make is to say, look, you can only learn so much from renaming bank statements. So after you've renamed your tenth bank statement, you've probably taken away 99% of the learning that you probably could have taken away from that bank statement. Yes, it's important to know how to read it and understand it, but there's only so much you can learn. Um, using law Y as an example, this is a great example to um sort of uh address that question, which is a very valid question from practitioners. You know, what happens to my juniors? They're not going to learn the traditional way. Will they be ever as good as me? Um and I think the answer is yes. It's just how you apply that training is just changing. The training is still getting done. It's just how they're how they're training themselves up is is is shifting. Um so take for example law Y. If you need to do legal research, you can do it the old-fashioned way, which is to, well, not all not super old-fashioned, but the current way, which is to go to Osley and try and find the case you're looking for. You have to look read the catchwords, and perhaps you'll spend three, four hours just to find that one case, like that golden nugget that you mentioned earlier, Jenna. Um, whereas with Law Y, you can surface that case within minutes, if not 30 seconds, and you could be on to reading that case right away. So you're still learning by reading the case. That's where the real learning occurs. Um, how you're finding that case is just taking a lot less time now, but you're able to read that case and then apply that case to a letter of advice or to your to your particular matter. So that learning experience there, where you're actually immersing yourself in that the relevant decision or the relevant case is the real learning experience. So I think the training is just shifting. The amount of time it takes to get to the actual learning is shortening, but I think juniors will still be learning just as much, if not more, because they're able to spend more time on the big learning and spend more, spend less time on the finding, getting to the learning resource.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

And I know senior practitioners, they spend so much time training junior lawyers, and then it is a a big hit on them, the practice when they do leave. If this could perhaps help in some way with that learning, then I think that's a big win for senior practitioners and principals of firms. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

That's right. It's going back to that, again, time being the most precious resource and the and the time investment you pour into lawyers who who may or may not stay with your practice. But if you can streamline that training pathway, that's a win for you. But also perhaps these tools will prevent burnout and reasons uh for leaving the firm or leaving the practice so that ultimately your investment does pay off.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Yeah, yeah. And senior practitioners would still play a key role in ensuring the the teaching and accuracy of the information is correct. But it's just those other simple things that could probably be better managed by AI.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

That's right, yeah, optimizing that training process.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

Thank you, Brendan. We've loved being in your ears for this bonus episode. Don't forget to like, subscribe, or share this episode. If you have any questions or any feedback, please email us or reach out to us on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube.