Name: CLOs are Transforming Legal Operations to Meet Modern Demands
Uploaded: 2025-03-07T16:16:10.434Z
Duration: 57 min 8 s
Description: CLOs are Transforming Legal Operations to Meet Modern Demands

Transcript for "CLOs are Transforming Legal Operations to Meet Modern Demands": take it away. Thank you so much, Jennifer. Really appreciate it. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening to everybody who's joined us. Thanks so much. We're really excited to see you. We're gonna be talking today about how the legal function is getting reimagined and how you can take control of it, really with a focus both on the human pain as it were of being in this pretransformation, state, which I I know is is dear to Laura's heart, as well as getting data driven into the middle of the business, so you can really start to take your spot in the, in the strategic operations of a business. But before we get there, let me introduce, my guests. As you know, because, Jennifer just told you, I, run product marketing over here at Agiloft. I am merely your humble moderator and timekeeper. Far more interesting, I'm joined this morning by Laura Richardson. Morning, Laura. How are you doing? Good morning. So Laura is our general counsel over here at Agiloft. She is perhaps the most fascinating lawyer I've ever met in my life. And I'm I have an English accent. So you could decide what to do with that. Fascinating. But long story short, after having been in, as it were, outside law, she came inside. She's dedicated herself to the tech industry. She's been at Intel. She's come over to Agiloft where she's recently actually helped us to go through a pretty significant, event where KKR taken a majority position. So, Laura, congratulations on that. That's pretty exciting. That's gotta feel good. I I understand. Maybe maybe you're able to sleep again now. Is that right? Yes. Luckily, catching up on sleep before this webinar. So Excellent. Alright. And, also, couldn't be more excited, to, welcome Tyler Marion as a principal in legal business solutions over at PwC. Based on every conversation I've had with Tyler, he appears to know everything. So I think you're gonna enjoy this conversation. Lots of details on the screen. I'm not gonna read them to you because we need to spend our time really getting into the conversation about about how the legal function's being reimagined. Now I got really interested in this, Tyler, because you and your team put out a fascinating article on the web called what's important to chief legal officers in 2024. And there were a couple of things in there that just leaped out at me. And the first thing was the first thing he said was reimagine your legal department. So tell us a little bit about kind of the the genesis of that research and kind of what we should be taking away as the as the foundation of this conversation. Yeah. Thank you, Simon. And I will take issue with the most fascinating lawyer as I also am a lawyer, so puts me in at least second place. Present present company accepted. There you go. So so PwC works with a multitude of different companies. So each each year, we take an opportunity to survey our clients. And part of that survey was a CEO survey. And a major data point was that 40% of CEOs feel that their company will be economically not viable in a decade. And stemming from that, we also took a pulse of our CLOs. And so marrying up those two points, how can CLOs reimagine their legal department to potentially negate that 40% of CEOs? So how do we work as a CLO, a GC to make our legal departments transform into something that is better as a cost center and then also contributes to potentially the GTM and STP functions of companies, all facets of companies. And so out of that survey, we highlighted six areas that a CLO can reimagine their legal department. I won't go through them, in-depth, but you can find them, via our website, at PWC. But they are reimagining your legal department, a very broad bucket. And, generally, what that means is there are always going to be events that the CLOs and GCs need to react to, and you can never plan for those, those. M and a, litigation, etcetera. But there are things that are systematic. And for those things, take a much more data driven approach, and find how you can at least automate some of those things, or at the very least prepare yourselves to deal with those on an annual and reoccurring basis. Modernized tech is the second. I think that's an ever present conversation in general counsel and CLO departments. We're gonna talk about that today. Manage risk. And I think that that's not breaking news. Legal departments are set up and established to manage risk and to mitigate risk. But what we mean there is perhaps maybe you want to get more mature and understand what your risk consumption should be. There's an ROI to managing risk, and some of those risks as they pass through the gates are okay based on a cost basis analysis. Work with your board is number four. That one, we probably won't discuss today, but that really is at the heart of be more present as a driver, as a value driver at your corporation. And then the last two, I think, are really gonna be parts of our conversation today, mature information governance. AI is on the scene, and the data that is going to be coming out of your AI programs is going to compound your issues or at least drive more need for you to create infrastructure. Infrastructure comes from lots of different ways. Part of it comes from tools like Agiloft. That's infrastructure. Infrastructure that can help to make data valuable data, not just mess. And then finally, enhancing your contract function. So we're gonna talk a lot about that today because of Agiloft. But enhancing that contract function really kind of brushes across a lot of what what we're in the first five. So I'm gonna save that one because it's gonna be really a common thread of our conversation today. But that is the CLO report, and it really stems from that 40% of CEOs that don't think that their company is gonna be economically viable in ten years. So perhaps with that, I can turn it back over to Laura and you, Simon, and that can maybe spearhead our our conversation. Yeah. No. That's great. Thank you. And as you say, we we are gonna get into the, kind of the data and the AI and the technology, as we go along. But I kinda wanted to start the conversation. Laura, perhaps you could weigh in here on, like, the simple question. Why does legal even need transforming? We're identifying that it's getting transformed. What's the need? What's the pain that's being felt that we need to we need to change things around? Laura, what's your thoughts on this? Yeah. I mean, this is a little bit of from my experience, right, my lens. And I've had the privilege of being able to be at a law firm in house, right, working for a judge, so kind of a broad experience. And one of the things that I see is the pain points tend to be pretty consistent, especially across legal departments, within a business. Part of it is one of perception. Right? It's the department of no. It's a legal is a cost center. It's a black box. And whether that perception is true or not, that perception hurts, in many cases, the credibility and the accessibility of the legal department. And it really also doesn't align with the rest of the business. Right? I think one of the things that Tyler and I are really on the same page about is, the story of the legal profession. Right? And this idea that it is a noble special profession. And I'm not saying we aren't noble and special. I mean, I find myself to be very noble, incredibly special. Sure. In my Doug funny cosplay, you know, you know. But the truth is I think that the perception becomes a problem for the department, as well as some of the practices that the departments have kind of gotten in the habit of. And it's very hard to manage that change because those are so deeply ingrained, in legal departments, in law firms, and otherwise, including a reluctance to use new technology to improve the efficiency and a little bit of and I don't think this is intentional, but holding on to knowledge closely and not finding, easy self-service ways for others to get that information, to get that knowledge without having to go and kind of pull it out of the legal department. And so I think as businesses start to realize that they need to transform and they are transforming, they're saying to the legal departments, you too. And sometimes I think there's a reluctance to lean into that, but it's it's time for it, and I see it happening. And for those that haven't, it will be imposed on them. Yeah. And I think I think when we talked before, Tyler, you said there's sort of an inevitability to this. There there is. I I echo everything that Laura said. I would add to it that what we're seeing at our clients is that the legal department's charter is expanding. So in the last ten years, if you took stock of what GC's top 10 priorities were on an annual basis, it started with all the typical usual suspects, litigation, deals, contracting. And now you see things like ESG, global risk, all of compliance. You're starting to see them be more business drivers rather than just legal drivers. And so with that, your department needs to transform to, one, accept all of those new challenges, and two, do it in a systematic and business minded approach. And, you know, Laura and I and Simon had a lot of prep calls and loved to commiserate and kind of joke about, you know, how when we were in law school, we were taught we were gonna do one thing, and the business was just gonna fall down and say, yes. That's what we need to do. And it can't be, you know, more counter to that. It is very much we are there to serve the business, and now we are becoming part of the business. And so that transformation needs to happen because of a forced pattern of charter expansion, I would I would argue. I I think that's true. So so let's so let's push that idea forward. So if we know that it's coming and it has to happen, it's gonna happen, what in in an ideal world, I I guess, does a post transformation legal department look like? Let's start. Let's give you the first take on this, Tyler. Yeah. So it it is data driven. It is process driven, and it is quick. So those those three things take a lot of energy and lift to get to, but we see it now every single day with our with our clients and our legal departments that they are doing those three things. They are, one, taking stock of the data that they need to operate, and they are also taking stock of the data that they can share across silos to say, our data is very valuable to you, procurement officer, to you, chief revenue officer, to you, compliance or CEO. They are using process. So Agiloft builds workflows. Agiloft builds rigidity around how things are done so that you can take stock of how fast you're moving. You can take stock of who's doing what work. Those those three component parts are, I think, the backbone of transformation. And so, you know, I would kinda push it to Laura now to say, are you seeing some of those same things? But but I would say those are the cornerstones that we're seeing. As a post transformation, you're utilizing those three things to operate. Yeah. I I I think those are three great things, and I wanna, talk a little bit about them, but also kind of the other side of those things. Right? If you don't have the right tools in place, you don't have the right team in place, you don't have the right systems in place, those improving in those areas are very difficult. But the other part of it is you have to do it in a scalable way. Because one of the things as legal departments that I think we're all seeing, more and more of, right, is this combination of the velocity expected, the increased scope of the legal department functions, and limited budgets. They result in burnout. They result in having retention issues. People instead of staying and trying to get through it. Right? Saying, I need a break, and quitting almost just because they need a break instead of because they're going to something better. And so the the other part of this, in addition to delivering more to the business and aligning more with the business, is you have to do it in such a way that you're also, taking care of your people and scaling humanely. So there's two sides of the same coin. If you're doing it right, right, if you're doing data right, if you're doing process right, and if you're doing velocity right, you're doing it in such a way that's not hurtful to the people on your team. And so I I do think a lot of the tools that people are investing in, right, are ones that not only have this actual return on investment to the company, but they ultimately have the potential of making everyone's lives easier, whether through self-service, automation, or simply just being something that offloads a lot of that manual day to day low value work from the legal department. That that's really fascinating. Right? So you in some sense, we're talking about two sides of the same coin. Right? So on the one hand, we're getting our hand, hands around, and I love the the three things, Tyler, the data, the processes, and the speed. And at the same time, in doing that, we're not only improving the business, we're also improving the environment in which people operate. So we're not just constantly replacing people, which which makes a lot of sense to me. And and at a principle level, this all sounds fantastic. Right? We're gonna make we're gonna move quicker. We're gonna have data. We're gonna all gonna be we're all gonna be available to go out on Friday night for drinks because we aren't as buried in all of the other stuff. Practically speaking, how does this come about? Right? How do how does this actually manifest itself? And, Laura, why why don't you take a take a run? Tell us a little bit about more about how technology really can sort of step in here. Here. Yeah. I think it's it's it's two parts to technology. Right? There's a technology that we use and then the people who advocate for and implement that technology. And so leadership within a legal department can come at all levels. And I've seen it come from the highest level of the CLO saying, hey, we're gonna take these initiatives. We're gonna do this thing. And they, really drive the need to find the right tools, to help with these with these improvement areas for a legal function. But it oftentimes doesn't come from the top. It comes from really, dedicated legal operations professionals, paralegals, and others who are in the legal function thinking to themselves, I know we can do this better. Right? And I think a lot of that comes from, again, going back to the pain point, having the same repeating issues over and over again. Whether it's hearing the complaint about legal not being transparent, whether it's about, legal not being fast enough, whether it's about, you know, the same NDA terms being negotiated over and over again. So tools, are often the solution to this because they are repeatable. Right? That's that scalability thing. And so I think, it takes leadership to say, hey. We need to change. And then it takes the right tools to help them make that change a reality, something that gives them, flexibility, scalability, and the ability to basically open up the legal department to the rest of the organization in such a way that both decreases the workload for the legal department and increases the trust that the rest of the business has in the legal department and what they're delivering to the business. Okay. So that's really interesting how you you had kind of a a mix here. I I I love how you're seeing both sides of it. So we're we're creating standardization, but still delivering flexibility within that. And we're making it easier for legal to work in a in a more, I don't know, structured way, but at the same time, providing an easier kind of window into it, a a connection to the other members of the of the organization. Am I am I reading that right? Yeah. Definitely. Business changes really fast. Right? And so the legal department doesn't just have to deliver results in a speedy way. They have to pivot in a speedy way. And that's why I think flexibility is such a critical part of good legal tools because the way that you're doing things today is not gonna be the way that you're doing things forever. Yeah. Oh, that's great. Ain't that true about everything? Right? Yeah. So so, Tyler, turning it over to you as we think about how this comes about practically speaking. I know you spoke earlier just a few minutes ago about how data, will be a part of it. How does how does data become a part of this transformation? Yeah. If you don't mind, Simon, I'd like to go back, though. So, again, echo everything that Laura said. I'll get a little bit more tactical, though. So, you know, it it starts with planning. Right? The the profoundness of that comment in and of itself. So so what what we what we see a lot of is that, yes, you need buy in from from leadership. That's why I echo what Laura said. You need to support that buy in with some good presentations on ROI. Why are you doing these things? And then you need to shape up your department before you start layering on technology and processes on top of it. So figure out what your objectives are immediately. Then figure out and and one of the things that Laura hit on that I did not is the people. People are also a major, you know, component to this equation. And, you know, I'm waiting for somebody to redo the people process and technology. Like, my word, that's been around for so long. I I hope one night maybe I crack it, but somebody needs to come up with three different ones. They work, but you just hear it over and over again. But it really is the the three ingredients. So people, the legal department is such a reactionary place. Right? And it is because of the nature of the work, but it doesn't have to be in totality. So we've got this reactionary world that we live in, and it really makes for grumpy people. It really makes for people that just don't wanna do it anymore. And I was in the legal department for six years, and so I drank that kind of Kool Aid. So what we're really talking about here is flipping it from a reactionary department to a proactive department, and that proactive department leverages those three things, process, data, and speed. And so now to the where do you start? You start with a business plan. You start with where are we going to get that ROI laid on top of these fresh new processes that we've developed before we do anything that's going to create a trend or a pattern or rigidity. So we, you know, we see a lot of clients developing ROI books. We see a lot of clients developing, like, we want to make this investment and here is the intended outcome, and this is how it affects UCLO and U business or U infrastructure. And so I really do think the first thing you need to do when you start this process of transformation is plan and then paper. So develop your business plan, develop what you want to invest in, and really, as a legal department, start to operate as a business. And so that is where you should start. And and, obviously, don't try and boil the ocean. If I can insert any more consulting language, I will. But but I really do think it is is as simple as spend some time, develop a PowerPoint, develop a six pager, develop something that can illuminate what you want to do as a business as as the legal department. So now, I think the question, Simon, that you asked was, data. How does data come into this? Is that is that was the question. Right? It was. Yeah. Yeah. So so data comes in, in in two ways, would be my opinion based on what we've seen with our clients. The first way, is what data do you consume as a legal department, and how can you use that data to improve your processes and, in essence, your people's lives? And so my world is contracting. So think about where are you spending your hours as a human, and where can you use what you have developed to expedite that process? So think of a contract negotiation. Where are you negotiating? Are you always falling back to your retreat points? If you are, can you work with the business to just make that retreat point your starting point so maybe you don't have to negotiate it at all? And then, you know, we we see this time and time again. You've got your templates. You've got your self-service channels. So data can help you drive a proper risk pro program and portfolio. Where is that risk that you have that you're willing to consume to speed up the process? Because at the end of the day, maybe there's not as not enough risk for you to spend your time because the ROI isn't there. We worked with an airline, and that airline it's a quintessential example. They were buying luggage trucks. Luggage trucks are delivered. There's no on-site permit. There's no on prem, you know, exposure. They're not sharing data. Lots of those things that drive risk were not present. So why can't that be a self-service model? So the data can help you inform where your risk is, and then you can build proper speed channels, self-service fast risk, middle risk, lower resources, high risk, high resources. And off of those channels, you start to use that data. So that that's one way of internal consumption of data, and then there's external consumption. How are how is the legal department's data informing other parts of the business, procurement and compliance? You, the legal department, have so much data that can just be shared out and help that business and drive the value of of the business. I've been talking for a while. So, Laura, I'd love to hear hear your opinions here. No. I I love this. And I, what I I think about when I think about data is the utility to the business, which is the point you just made. But there's also a different utility, which is other functions within the business have been using data so efficiently, not just for supporting the business, doing business, but they've used it efficiently for their own, departments benefit. And so if a legal department starts to get data about one of the fundamental time and money areas for a legal department, right, which is contracts, contract management, the legal department can also better advocate for itself and its needs. Because one of the hardest things to do is you go into an argument with somebody in a budgeting session, and you're asking for something, and you don't have data to back it up. And then the other department does because they're really disciplined, and data use is core to how they run their department. So one of the, one of the things I think about a lot is, you know, the the perception issue again, right? Someone says, oh, everything gets caught up in legal. Okay. So then you you implement a tool, and that tool helps you track that data better. And then when someone brings that up, you can go and say, like, well, actually, no. Here's the numbers. And you'll see that only 10% of the time that a document is being negotiated is with our legal team. The 90 other percent is with them. And it helps you kind of reframe people's perceptions of you using, really, frankly, a language that the rest of the business is used to and fluent in. And I think I see this I see some more of these classes in law school now. Competencies within operations and using data, because it is critical in order to do our jobs well and to get the resources that we need. That's right. Yeah. And and I think I think you've tied back to what Tyler was talking about earlier there, which is when you mentioned having a a business plan. I'm I'm not smart enough to imagine doing a six pager or or or whatever. Like, wait. The way I think about it is find a problem, work out how how impactful propose a solution. And then you do the sort of the the the theoretical math and go, if I if I buy this thing, we'll save this much. It's better than not doing it. Right? It's arguing against inaction. And I think similarly this please. Oh, I I just can say, I I I think that's really transactional. I think that's important is to say the cost of this tool is far less than the the benefit of it to the business on a on a dollars line. But I think if you just put it in those terms, it goes back into that cost center. So that data has to be part of it, but you can't forget the human data, which is retention is critical. Losing people is financially very damaging to a legal department and to a business. It's really hard to backfill a person who's been there for a while, because it takes time to get to know the business. Right? Morale, people who are in departments where morale is really low, I think they suffer from kind of having people, being able to be present and and really deal with things more proactively. Right? And so that's a a thing that's hard to quantify, but will be part of your presentation in addition to that straight ROI. But this is one thing I always it it boggles my mind a little bit. The legal profession is about storytelling. Right? When we go to law school, there and I'm not saying everyone in the legal profession goes to law school. I'm talking just about my own experiences as a as a lawyer. There's this emphasis in legal writing on telling a compelling story. And then, you know, coming from a litigation background, how do you win a trial? You have a compelling story. And I don't see why we're not using that skill more when we're asking for things for ourself. And I go back to writing a brief. Right? You've got a brief, and you have to support it with evidence. So we're also good at using data. It's just we're used to using data that's in this form, and now we have to transform our minds and say, we're gonna use data that's more numerical. We're gonna use data that comes from these sources, and we're gonna use it to tell a compelling story about the value, about the data that we possess and can share, and about why it makes sense to invest in a strong and, capable legal function. Yeah. And you you actually you did a really good thing there, Laura, of pulling me out of my sort of my my straight lines and right angles thought of building ROI models. But I I think it also speaks to, Adam, maybe you'd like to comment on this, either of you. It it's not just about the individual thing. It's not just that you look at, here's a contract that was done 20% quicker or that had, I don't know, 10% less cost or whatever. It's also looking at the broader sort of corpus of all of your contracts and deriving some intelligence there. Right? And I I wonder if you have any any thoughts on that. Is that to me? I'm sorry. Either either way, whoever wants it, grab it. Sorry. I I should've said it there. Go ahead, Lloyd. Go ahead. You're both so polite. No. No. Tyler. Shove each other out the way. Tyler, go ahead. Well, actually so if if I may, there was a question that popped up that I that I wanted to maybe address first. So, a question comes across about business requirements, when coming from coming from the legal department, how we don't, boil the ocean. Sorry to speak, consulting. So so I I would tell, this person that typically what we see is the best way to implement a solution is to take out of the box. So I would say the first lens that you should look through is what are the out of the box functionalities of these systems? Core functions are the easiest to implement. When you're coming up with business requirements that kind of stem off of those out of the bunks out of the box functionalities, look to and this is where you can leverage some of that data and ROI. Where are you spending the most amount of your time? So, again, I come from the contracting world, so I use these as parallels. So what we see a lot of is handoffs. Handoffs are very, very important to the the ROI of a system. So when you're talking about the business requirements that a legal department wants to leverage, you need to talk about what the processes are and how those processes can be leveraged against the system's out of the box functionality. And keep it simple. Don't try and overcomplicate what those requirements might be. It could be, stations that the contract moves through. It could be the types of data that moves through those stations. You start to get more complicated when it talk when you talk about, you know, automation, when it comes to AI. Is the contract being read by a tool? What are the outputs that that system is going to give you? What kind of processes do you have to use to get the negotiation functions for CLM. You know, if you just need to move faster, maybe it just needs to be an alert. If you need to move faster, maybe it's working in one system. I think keeping business requirements pinned to the out of the box functionality is the best way to gather requirements. And I think and sorry. The question went away. But there was a part about, maybe working with the business. And I think mirroring that up to where the business is going to leverage the functionality oh, there it is again. Sorry. Yes. So it's acting more like a client. Yes. So so I think working as kind of putting your client hat on, and I'm reading that as business client. So putting your business hat on, understanding what objectives they need. And if it's speed, again, it's how does it move through that systems out of the box functionality as fast as possible. The more complicated it gets, the more ad hoc things you add, the more that's going to have impacts on change management, build time, cost, etcetera. I hope that answered the question. Now, Simon, in all of that talking, I've lost what the question was originally. So if you could reask it, that would be really interesting. Could I also add a spark really quickly? Oh, no. No. No. No worries. Let's do it. This is great stuff. Yeah. Okay. So I have two, what I call kind of first step or or pragmatic thoughts about this. Not that yours wasn't pragmatic, Tyler. Yours are just beautiful. I'm just riffing off of it with two of my own thoughts as you were talking. So one thing is the legal department's really good at getting client input on certain things. But when a department has to look at itself, that can be very challenging. So a recommendation that I think is is practical is what other business function has undergone a transformation project and asking them to help. Right? I think we oftentimes overlook the internal resources or the impact of a collaborative environment. I'd say if if finance recently had a big implementation of a new system, go to finance and say, who led this effort? Who got that kind of initial checklist of the core requirements? And then ask them for help because sometimes it's easier to have an outsider do that than an insider. The second thing is, I I love this line. A horse by committee is a camel. And so in terms of coming up with that that not over engineered product, right, there are two things that I think are incredibly important. Number one is who's the d? You need to have a well defined decider who is the bottom line or the last check for every single decision, and then they need to be empowered to make those calls and move forward without having to get input at a at a certain level. Right? And so knowing who that is and really holding them and giving them that power is incredibly important. And then the second one here is it's about the minimal viable product at first. And so you really want to cut out everything that's nice to have and just say, what is our biggest pain point that we're trying to solve with the solution and come up with that minimal viable product for it? And then just know that if you need to change it or modify it or make it bigger in the future, make sure that you have a solution that can do that. But start with what you need. Laura, I I wanna I wanna give you three cheers for getting minimum viable product. And there you are officially a tech bro. Excellent work. But I I I you know, it's interesting. I don't think I I don't think I've even approached your your horse and camel thing, which is my favorite thing of the day. That's right. I'm Forget the empathy. That that's the that's the goal. It's outstanding. But the the metaphor I always use for this sort of stuff is imagine that you live in a row house and you have a rodent problem. Right? You wanna get someone to come in and have someone who's gonna get rid of the mice. Right? Let's get rid of the mice. We know we also have raccoons and possums, and I'm running out of of out of out of rodents. Ocelots. I don't know. We have other issues going squirrels. Squirrels love to get into roofs, I've I've learned. Right? Make sure you've got someone who's gonna get rid of the mice. Right? Make sure that you've gotta win. You've taken a thing. Right? So in real life, it's if nobody's actually asking for MBAs, they're just copying and pasting them in, and that's bad. Pick that. Right? Solve that, but make sure when it as you're sort of working out, you're just looking ahead a little bit and going, do I have confidence that I'll be able to get the rest of the rodents next next? But you have to say I think you're exactly right. MVP, pick a problem, solve problem, demonstrate success, put points on the board is the is is the way I call it in in my end of business. Points on the board and keep moving. Alright. That was really interesting, and I wanna thank the the person who asked that question, for taking us down that path. That was really useful. The question I had asked, however, was, we had talked about You're not letting us off. I'm not letting you off, Philip. Not at all. We talked about sort of looking at sort of in the specific. Right? Did I get a contract done quicker? Did I, you know, not spend as much money on my 7,000,000 widgets? But also the sort of the broader corpus, the the ability to look at the existing sort of library of live contracts or possibly even past contracts to start to get a little smarter about the business. So that's sort of a a data thing. So I'm wondering, you know, do you see that as being fundamental to this transformation title, that ability to get back and really derive insights, or is that just a thing that I think about? So so I think that deriving insights is a red herring. I think all of the tech vendors say it. All of the consultants say it. They say it as like a, hey. You can go back over your contracts, and you can figure out how you've negotiated things. And I know I've even said it during this webcast, but that's a lot of money. And most of the time, you need the money to put the system in. Now you can do it in a small subset to get those business requirements because that is a necessity. And so that that's what I meant. But kind of going over the whole corpus of contracts, like, it's a really great thing to have and people talk about it all the time, but I have yet to see a client actually do it, particularly because they've gotta spend their money in other places. And it's a wise use of that money. But what I will say, tangentially related, is that when you're building your ROI case and when you are talking about speed, the one thing that I think most clients have in common is nobody has the Genesys data. Nobody tracks how long it takes to do things. Or maybe they do it for themselves or a small subset. But clients will come to us and say, can you build us a business case? And we'll say, sure. We've got all these formulas that we've built. Now you just provide us the data and we'll just run it through the the formulas. And all of them say, I don't have the data. So you end up having to do an academic exercise. And so I think, you you know, to to answer the question, one of the things that makes the most sense is to tar start to take stock of how long these things take and where you're negotiating terms and what maybe the the, you know, the the oldest active contracts you have take stock of the provisions and how those have maybe changed over one or two, three iterations. That type of data is very valuable, the active population. Going back over the entire I mean, I'd love to help anybody do it. It's fantastic to get that insight, but I think that the ROI is just not there because it is very costly and timely. Laura, I'll turn it over to you. That's something I know it. Yeah. I you you can see that I'm chomping at the bit. It's all horses, all they do. I've even got my two horse pins. I mean so I I I don't think it's a red herring or or quite at that level. I love your whole what's the ROI on it. Right? Because if it's high cost and low value, there's no reason to do it. Now if it's high cost and high value, there might be a good reason to do it. So I think it's really knowing your business, knowing what your goals are, and knowing kind of like what's on your horizon. So I'll give a good example of this. You would talk a little bit at the beginning about the article and how, there are certain things that, like, data can't super help you prepare for, like, litigation or m or m and a. And I actually think m and a is one of the things that data can very much help you prepare for. If you know that you've got something on the horizon, getting ahead of kind of, like, those typical diligence questions and starting to either make sure that you're tracking that through your solution or going back and doing some of that work, can save you a lot of time and a lot of heartache. But you have to know that that's on your horizon, right, for that to be worth a high investment. I think one thing we're gonna continue to see more and more of, and and we've seen this, in our own use of our CLM, is AI will make that data more accessible and will lower over time the cost of that going back and looking in the historical archives. So recently, we use, in in my own legal department, we used AI trainer. And that was, like, an incredibly efficient way for us to go and look for something very specific within our agreements. And so the overall cost of the time and resources technology ended up being, I'd say, like, low low to mid cost, and the value was high. And so it's really thinking about cost and value as as sliders that are going to be changing dramatically as AI becomes more integrated into enterprise solutions. Mhmm. Now I'm gonna just inject my little Bill Maher thing here. For for every if anybody who if you know, you know. For anybody who doesn't know what AI trainer is, AI trainer is a a a feature of the, the Agiloft, data first agreement platform, which allows you to build your own model. Right? So every CLM will say, run our AI. We'll pull out counterparty names and dates and prices and force majeurs and such. But if you're looking for a thing that isn't standard, that isn't something that everybody's looking for, you would use AI trainer as you did. I'm thrilled to hear, by the way, Laura, to to train the AI on a specific thing to go look for so then you can set it loose. Really useful. Right? Because and and I think, you know, you've you've given us a wonderful bridge. You know, speaking of things that people talk about using a whole lot more than they use, to to AI. Right? If we're talking about data, is this the point at which we say, where does where does AI really feature here? And and I I'm really interested to hear your thought on this, Tyler, particularly sort of, like, is it replacing legal minds? Is it enhancing legal minds? You're both lawyers. I'm gonna guess not replacing. What do you think? So, AI is everywhere. AI is going to be everywhere. You know, I I think that this is being a bit bombastic, but, like, I think it's the fourth revolution. Right? I mean, AI is gonna change literally everything that we do. And so preparing for that is is necessary. But I think that it's still nascent. I still think that that AI is in a place where it's we need to figure out where to use it first, and we need to figure out what the outcomes of that AI are. So more data is going to be coming through your doors. And so if you're not kind of preparing for where that data goes and then make sure that it's good data that you're getting, you're gonna you're gonna whole lot of mess. So but to answer the question, how is AI going to replace people or replace things? It depends. If you're a mature legal department that's already in your transformation, it might it's not gonna replace anybody. In fact, it's gonna make those people more effective and more efficient. If you're an efficient. If you're an immature legal department, it might replace 50%. You know, it it really depends on where you are on the maturity curve, the impact that it's going to have. We're still at a place and time where AI is expensive. I mean, I won't insert the name of AI companies, but there are some that are still charging $15.50 dollars a call. Like, that's not cheap. That's expensive. So we're still at a place where it's it's not cheap, but it has really good impact. And then the final thing that I'll say is, you know, taking from the companies that are actual AI companies or who have acquired massive AI platforms, the way that they use it, I think, is a really good beacon for how legal departments should be using it themselves. And, again, I won't name the name, departments should be using it themselves. And again, I won't name the names, but you know who they are. And the way that they do it runs the gambit. There are legal departments that say it needs to be part of literally everything you do. If you come to me with a breach or a a brief, if you come to me with a proposal, if you come to me with an output, I want you to tell me that you have used AI. And then there are others on the end of that spectrum that are saying, alright. For extra credit, use AI on this thing and tell us what the ROI was. I think that's all a way to say, based on the maturity and how many people it will affect either by expanding on what they can do or eliminating what they do all the way to we're still trying to figure out how it's going to be used. We're still in this kind of gray area. But nonetheless, it is everywhere and it will be everywhere and it's here to stay. Laura, thoughts? I mean, you you brought it up. You used AI, God bless you. I well, not me personally. My god. No. Couldn't Yeah. Yeah. Could've cost. Just kidding. No. I have. I have. And and I, I I wouldn't say I'm all in. I am trying to be pragmatic, and I think that's where a lot of legal departments are are leaning towards. Right? There are risks, of using it. There is still very much a need for a human partnering with a solution and using it as a tool rather than using it as as a, oh, gosh. Why can't I come up with this word right now? As as as something that's like a person. Right? I mean, we we rely on others, and others make mistakes too. So I'm not saying that relying on humans is fully accurate. Right? But we recognize that, and there's a dynamic of conversation between individuals when we have high stakes things, and we need to keep that mentality in mind when working with AI and and figure out when it makes the most sense to use it. Right? This goes back to minimal viable product. This goes back to what do you need. And so if the edict is use AI and people are kind of using it scattershot, it actually might not be an efficient way to do things. Right? And it might actually be, an unnecessary step. But if you say, hey. This is where we think it's gonna have the highest impact, and you focus on empowering people to use it in that area, it becomes a force multiplier. And I think that's where I see, legal departments that are successfully integrating AI going and finding that those use cases are the ones that are providing the most value now. I think one or two recommendations to legal departments using AI is the players, the technology, the whole of it is changing so quickly that, don't be afraid to be a little AI agnostic. So so I wouldn't put all of your eggs in one AI company's basket. I would look for solutions that integrate with AI solutions. Right? So that you can say, like, hey. I I have this, and right now we're using this, this power cell for our AI functionality. And and in the future, we might say we're gonna use a different one. Right? So that modular way of designing your solution stack, when it comes to AI. So you're not tied into one that ends up falling behind. But I'm excited. And I I'll give you an example of why. I have a friend on LinkedIn who I worked with at Intel. She was in the business. She wrote a book in two days. She gave herself, yeah, using AI, and she published it on Amazon. And all I can think is, oh my gosh. AI can take your idea for a book to publish or maybe it was, like, three days. I think it was, like, seventy seventy two hours, actually, now that I'm saying that. So that's what carry the two. Okay. But I really think I really I I see that, and I think, my god, how much AI can extend what we do, can fuel our creativity, can fuel what we're able to produce, And I think it's amazing. So so if I yeah. Completely agree. If, if I may, I I think the the the best way to use AI is to borrow the system integrator mentality as a legal department. So, right, design, build, test, release. Don't skip those steps because, Laura, to your point, like, it is such an accelerator. I mean, it is rocket fuel. And if you don't control the fuel, you will have a fire, a massive burn, a massive explosion. So you need to really set the foundation and and test it and make sure because the amount of data that comes out of these AIs and these models, and it's you can't really you can't unwrap it. Right? I mean Yeah. I I believe that we have pushed past the days where, where, you know, people talk about hallucinations, and I think I think we're past those days. Yes. It's going to have errors. Yes. The the the human user is going to input things that are going to cause a misfire or a mistarget. There's lots of ways that this can introduce risk, but if you're tactical and strategic about how you leverage it using those those SI models, I think we are in a it's it's amazing, and it's going to have a profound impact. Yeah. I I I think that's true. I'm gonna I'm gonna just put a cap on this. I wanna get to a a final roundup here. But I I I would say at a at a practical level, I everything you just said is right. I think for folks who are looking at AI, getting excited, they look at it going, but can I? I think the recommendation is find a thing that you can get done that's going to save you time or that's going to reduce some pain, but that that doesn't introduce too too much risk. Right? That's the way to get yourself too comfortable. So don't necessarily start by saying, you know, take this take this really stressful HSA and rewrite it for me because that's not gonna make you happy. Right? Maybe every time a contract comes in, tell it to write you a summary that you save so that the next person has to look at it, doesn't have to read all 20 pages. They can get a sense of what's going on. That's the sort of thing that can save you a boat all the time, but doesn't introduce real genuine terrifying risk and gets you gets your feet wet. And then you can start moving down the path to doing stuff that's a little bit more a little bit more exciting. Alright. On that note, I I do wanna make sure we're respecting everyone's time. We only got a few minutes left. I wanna ask you one last question. We've really we've talked about, you know, legal department has to transform. Legal department is transforming. Data is becoming meaningful. We're pushing it through the technology. We've thought about some ideas on how you can bring that technology to bear. So assuming that this is basically, this all is happening, The question and I'll I'll I'll start with you, Tyler, is how will we know this is working? How will we know that the transformation process has really taken hold and is becoming a part of our of our everyday reality? So I'll answer it in two ways. The first way is before you embark on a transformation, know how you're going to measure your success. Really develop that right after you develop your objectives. How are we going to know that this is working? So if you're talking about speed, know how to measure speed so that when you're on the other side of this transformation, you can measure it against it and say, yep. We're going as fast as we thought or no, we're not. So it's not working. So know what you're going to measure and calculate. The second way to answer it is a bit more, is a bit is a bit more kind of blurrier. And I actually think the way you know it's working is if every single day you wake up and you are answering tougher and tougher questions because that means easier questions are being answered by the solution. You don't have to, like, have we ever contracted with this client? I I shouldn't have to answer that question ever again. I should be able to go and look at a system, and the system will be able to tell me. And so the questions you should be getting asked are, our limitation on liability is x. We reached our insurance premium. You know, our our insurance cap, what do we do? Those are really tougher questions. And if those are the majority of the questions that you're answering, you should know that your system is working because you are you are there to do what you're trying to do. That's fantastic. I love that. I love that idea. Laura, over to you. I I don't know those answers. Yeah. Those are great answers. And I think the only thing I really have to add is transformation is hard. And so early success is probably failure. Lawyers and the legal department are very risk averse, right? And we're trained to be risk averse. And we have to learn how to manage that training And accept that we might make some missteps, and that our initial attempt is maybe not going to work the way that we thought it would, it's not going to get the adoption we thought it would, right? And become more comfortable with that with that failing muscle because it it's those failures that lead us to success. And so it's okay at first to feel that way. I'd say, like, psychological safety among your team and with other departments is a key component of say you to fail to get to success. So focus on, I think, that as a leader and in getting buy in from the other parts of the business. And that's a that's a wonderful way to sum it up in the end because we've we've put all of these things together. And I think we've all said, build your business case, understand what you're doing, take the the the that SI approach, and be prepared for failure to lead to success. And by knowing that you've got a, you know, a defined thing that you're trying to do, it takes some of the fear of maybe not reaching all of your goals out. Tyler, Laura, I can't believe I'm gonna say that. Actually, I can totally believe I'm gonna say this, but we're run we've run out of time. We have you I who would have thought that the three of us would manage to keep talking for an hour? Hard to imagine. I wanna thank you both so very much. This has been fascinating. It's been edifying. It's been valuable. I hope everybody who's joined us, would agree. If you have joined us, you will be receiving, some follow-up, from us and, you know, for me to lock up and also from the from the folks who hold these things. We look forward to seeing you again at some point in the future. And on that note, knowing this about the top of the hour, I'm gonna say thank you, Tyler. Thank you, Laura. Thank you, everybody who joined us. Have a wonderful day, and we'll see you next time.