Your Firm Runs on You

All right. So good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the webinar. Just a couple of house rules. Make sure you drink water, keep aerated, keep comfortable, and hold on. Let's start. So your law firm runs on you, and this afternoon we're going to look to change that. This isn't about adding more to your plate. It's about building ethical systems that genuinely lighten your load. We're here to discuss how intelligent systems can give you, the women law firm owners, your valuable time and energy back. Not just about efficiency. But before we go any further, I just want to share a little bit about my journey and why I'm so passionate about this work. So I spent over 25 years in legal technology consulting with some of the biggest names in law. And leading software teams that implemented large-scale solutions for law firms. But beyond those numbers, my deepest understanding of your challenges really comes from my own life and my own background. See, I've lived the demands of caregiving for a special needs daughter while managing my businesses, and I relied in on the need for systems to truly support me to get through that. My daughter depended on them and me, so therefore I was able to be there for her. So this isn't just theoretical for me, it's personal. And that's why I'm so committed to building solutions that truly make a difference for you. I don't come at this from theory. I came to it from responsibility. This commitment is also reflected in my book, which I'll tell you a little bit about next. Shameless plug. So Law Partner in Heels really came about the whole vision of understanding how women lawyers, women-owned law firms really navigate and really execute in today's world. So this book is a direct response to the unique pressures faced by women managing partners and law firm owners. That may be distinct from guys. It's for those of you who are brilliant in the courtroom, if you're a trial lawyer, but feel overwhelmed by everything that else that's in the construct of running a firm. So this book is really an homage to you because it should honor you. This book is also a practical guide for building a practice that thrives on robust systems, not just on your endless hours. It's about creating a firm that runs smoothly even when you step away. In many ways, today's presentation is a live sequel. It will be how to turn that conviction into responsible AI-enabled execution. So if you decide to move forward with us, which we'll discuss a little bit later, I'll send you a free copy. And now let's look at what we'll cover today in order to achieve that. Hey everyone, we're going to spend about 30 minutes going through a presentation to give you some information and background on our services and how we see AI in the legal space today. And then we'll take a few-minute break and then there'll be a pitch. So stick around and you can learn how to use our program to help you. So we'll start addressing The core problems that are costing you in your practice, the things that are draining your time, your margin, and your peace. And then we'll dive responsibly into what AI truly means for attorneys, focusing on what the American Bar Association actually requires of you today. Then we'll explore specific solutions from Law Firm AI Expert, my company, including Trial Lift with its ability to help trial lawyers prepare for trial and not worry about false citations. And then we'll talk about our sister company, Cognify Solutions AI, which provides robust governance throughout your use of AI. Finally, I'll share with you a next step, how to book a discovery session with us to begin your transformation. So this entire session is really designed to be concise and impactful with some time afterwards to, for your questions. With that in mind, let's start off by taking on the elephant in the room, and that's segment 1, the problem. This is where we get real about the fundamental issue facing many of you. Which is your firm should not require your exhaustion to survive. Your firm was not built to run without you. And that's a critical point we need to address. Let's be honest about what the, what this reality is really costing you, both professionally and personally. Wouldn't you love to do much more with less? That's what we're here for. Now, before we talk about AI, we need to tell the truth about what owner-dependent growth is costing you. So this afternoon, we need to be clear about who this message is for and why it matters so much now. This isn't a generic presentation. It's built for you, the woman managing partner or law firm owner. Running a serious law firm, whether it's litigation, personal injury, or general practice. Above all, Lord knows we all know you're not lazy. You're just simply overworked, wearing every hat from rainmaker down to bottleneck. Now, you've likely explored AI, but hesitated to deploy it or use it because of concerns about accuracy and confidentiality. And that hesitation is absolutely understandable, but utilizing AI is really the way to go because the current path, if you're on it without it, is not sustainable. So let's talk next about what your practice could look like in 6 months. And building on that, let's paint a pic— a picture of what it would look like. Imagine moving from drowning in work to scaling revenue while working fewer hours. Instead of personally handling every or overseeing every administrative task, you'll have systems that keep things running smoothly and transparently. You'll shift from worrying about cash flow to feeling financially secure with a steady stream of high-value clients. But most importantly, This is the part I like. You'll be present for family events and dinners and vacations, transforming from exhausted and stuck to a confident leader who truly owns her time. This isn't a fantasy. It's a strategic outcome, but to get there, we need to address some fundamental challenges. So what's holding you back from that vision of success? We identified that there are 3 core problems that we see over and over again. First, there's the time trap. You want to bill more, but the only way you know how to is to work more, and you've hit a ceiling. There's no more time and no more hours to give. Second, there's the AI fear. Stanford University has confirmed that AI legal tools hallucinate 1 out of every 6 queries. That's 17% of the time for an industry where 0% of the time is the tolerance. And your malpractice carrier doesn't care that AI wrote it because your name is on the brief. And then finally, the ethics gap. The American Bar Association Formal Opinion 512 came out in 2024 at the tail end. And using generic AI without an audit trail isn't just risky. It's already a problem in some jurisdictions. These are serious issues that lead us directly to what the bar requires of you. And that brings us to responsible AI for attorneys. This isn't just a suggestion. It's your professional obligation now. The ABA's Formal Opinion 512 is clear. It's not about if you use AI, it's about how you use AI. This isn't a gray area, it's a mandate. Use AI responsibly or pay the penalty. The current path is not sustainable if you're using AI without these safeguards. And I'm going to put a link to information about that ADA statute in the chat so you have that handy. So we need to understand the rules that govern this new landscape and what they are. So let's talk about 5 of those rules. And these rules have no exceptions. First, you must understand before you use. Competence now includes knowing how AI tools work and where they can fail. Ignorance is no longer a defense. Second, supervise every output. AI is a tool, not a paralegal. Attorney review is required before any client matter. Period. Third, verify every citation. AI hallucinates. Stanford confirmed it. One in six legal queries, produce a false citation. But you own that error. And now, even if it comes from opposing counsel, if you're in court. Fourth, maintain an audit trail. You must be able to demonstrate how AI was used in any matter. No trail means no defense. And finally, project— protect your client confidentiality. Consumer AI tools are just not built for legal confidentiality. Not when they learn from our information and expose it to the public, unless we opt out. But using them without governance will also violate Model Rule 1.6 of that ABA statute. Everything we build at Law Firm AI Expert is designed around these 5 rules, not as an afterthought, but as part of the foundation of what we provide. Law Firm AI Expert We've talked about the critical rules for responsible AI, the non-negotiables. Now let's take a look at how Law Firm AI Expert translates those principles into practical, ethical solutions for your practice. And again, this isn't about generic software. It's about custom systems built around your firm's unique needs. How do we do it? We diagnose your firm's overload points. The time sucks, the manual processes, whether it's in your practice or related admin aspects of running the business. And we prescribe a responsible roadmap and give you a summary of our analysis over the next 6 months to address all of them, focusing on practical automations that respect your judgment and protect your practice. And the good thing is it takes a minimal amount of your time. Once we understand the use cases, we can build it and then show it to you when we're ready to go. So, the time— this timeline maps your firm's journey from today's overwhelm to a future of strategic advantage over the next 3 to 6 months. We start by acknowledging the current inefficiencies and aim for a practice that's ultimately optimized, scalable, and proactive within 3 to 6 months. In just 1 month, you'll see a quick win with an initial automation delivering immediate time savings, cost savings, and error reduction. By 3 months, we'll have real momentum with optimized processes and increased capacity. So this isn't just about surviving, it's about transforming your practice into a market leader. So let's dive into some specific automations that ultimately will make this possible. So we prioritize automations that deliver the fastest, most impactful time savings and cost reduction for your firm first. So here are some example workflows. Imagine intelligent client intake that scores new potential cases and clients against your firm's historical patterns and history, so you know which cases are truly worth your time and effort and which are not. Then there's drafting and summarizing, where AI creates first drafts from complex documents, always citing its sources. So you have defensible quality to be handed off to the, the attorney for their review and sign-off. And picture client communications intelligence, personalized updates that are automated, freeing you from being a constant help desk for your clients. These are just 3 examples. There are many more, probably use cases that are different for you, of how we delegate tasks without compromising your standards of judgment. Now let's talk about how we integrate these solutions in your existing environment. Our custom solutions are built on what you already have from an IT perspective so that there's no new logins, no disruptive migrations, and no unnecessary complications from an IT standpoint. Our web-based applications will be rock-solid secure and also operate inside your network. Whether your firm runs Microsoft or Google, we integrate our solutions directly into your existing tech to leverage those platforms' built-in safety features and efficiencies on top of our own. So every system that we deploy comes with built-in governance, audit trails, and validation, ensuring accountable, human review, and we build dashboards so you have that information in a handy, very easily, visibly digestible manner. This foundation ensures that you're always in control, your practice remains secure and compliant, and we provide you with all the necessary training materials, videos, and we keep that enforced and up to date and revised as long as we're engaged and even beyond. Now let's take a look at a specific example that's a game changer for trial preparation. Trial Lift with Citation Validator is a solution designed to protect your license and your reputation as you go to trial. Trial Lift is designed to help trial attorneys to automate preparation for trial, even suggesting a winning strategy based on all available case data. This isn't just another AI tool. It's the only AI trial prep tool that won't get you sanctioned. This segment coming up will show you how Trial Lift catches those critical errors before they even ever reach a judge. And then let's dive into how Trial Lift safeguards your practice right now. So this dashboard, when you open the application, is your firm's command center designed to give you back precious hours and give you critical insights. You can access any of the modules along this left access here in the left sidebar, where you can upload and connect to various document sources, including your own case management platform. To do legal research and perform an AI analysis on your trial case files to suggest a successful trial strategy. Imagine generating hours of work with just one click using the AI quick prompts or getting smart alerts that could tell you, for example, Judge Harrison favors the plaintiff 78% of the time in these types of cases. Trial Lift is always watching always learning, giving you insights that you need to win, and learning your practice as time goes along, which makes you better. But the real power, the real true license, comes next. And that's with Citation Validator. This is the heart of Trial Lift, our Citation Validator. It's the only AI trial prep tool that actively protects your license which is a non-negotiable in today's landscape. It validates every citation you research from our platform. Think about that. A brief with 42 citations in one of our examples here, and our system flags 4 as risky for your review. It even catches errors in expert medical reports. Trial Lift catches hallucinated citations first, pulling from reliable case databases to do its verification. This is how you ensure that defensible, sourced, and verified work every single time in your trial preparation is performed. But we don't stop there. There's even more protection in our, in the Trial Lift system, what we call guardrail systems. Beyond validation, Trial Lift includes a robust guardrail system because simply catching errors isn't enough. We need to prevent them. Guardrails protect you against you sharing your personal information, HIPAA, or client data in a prompt, and then anchors the citation analyzer to filter out and prevent false responses back during your AI search. The system automatically flags all hallucinations and blocks untraceable sources. And critically, in Trial Lift, we always maintain a human-in-the-loop approach. AI assists, but the attorney always decides and approves. Information is verifiable and ethical, protecting your firm from potential risks and giving you peace of mind. Review is always approved and required before any action, ensuring you remain in charge and fully responsible. For a demo, we'll put a link in the chat and you can book a time with us and we'll gladly walk you through Trialift. Now let's talk about the overarching framework that makes all of this truly safe and secure. And that's Cognify Solutions AI. This is the critical governance layer that makes everything that we've discussed so far truly defensible and truly trustworthy. It's about ensuring that the AI you're using is not just efficient, but also ethical and compliant from the ground up. Cognify provides the framework to build trust and transparency in your AI systems, giving you the peace of mind you need when integrating these advanced technologies like AI into your practice. It monitors all AI activity by user to capture user errors or improper AI use. This way, employees can be retrained on how to properly use AI. So let's explore how Cognify builds this governance from day one so you know you're never playing catch up. So, Cognify Solutions ensures that AI governance is in place at all times, keeping your use of AI safe and secure in Trial Lift. We focus on ethical AI by design, integrating ethics into every step, such as the ABA statute, from data sourcing to algorithmic outputs. And our scalable compliance frameworks grow with you adapting as AI models and regulations evolve, which seemingly happens every week these days. Cognify tracks AI use in accordance to two federal standards right now that are the baseline for AI governance today. So we've discussed the tools, and now we want to talk about the next practical step for your firm. So this isn't about adding more complexity to your already overflowing plate. It's about simplifying your operations and truly empowering your practice to give you back more time and more time to earn more. This initial assessment and roadmap is specifically designed by lead— for leaders like you. Who demand clarity before making any kind of significant commitment. We'll spend 2 focused hours together diving into your firm's current state, identifying exactly where AI can create the greatest operational lift for you, and give you a document along with this roadmap. That's it. You'll walk away with a clear custom roadmap and report not some generic advice you could find online. This is the shortest, most direct, and affordable path from feeling overwhelmed by AI to having a concrete plan you can trust. And again, all of our work is fully guaranteed from the get-go. So now let's address some of those questions that you and the audience might have now. Because many of you are thinking, yes, but, and those aren't objections. Those are just concerns that you need to voice. Any questions in the audience? All right, sir. Can you hear me? Hey, Gear, how are you? I'm doing good, my friend. For an estate planning and administration practice, I didn't hear any of my buzzwords. Life and death. Which are life and death and what else? What buzzwords are you talking about, Peter? Well, all I'm saying is I didn't hear anything that was relevant to what I'm doing. I'm not checking citations and I'm not writing briefs and I'm not processing medical records. And those were the things I heard talked about. Those were just some examples, Peter. What we're offering is a 2-hour discovery session, because I don't know your business and I can't make recommendations or I would not try to market products to you. Again, as I said earlier, this is not a, this is not a sale. This is about offering an opportunity to look at your business and see where within your business that perhaps you have manual processes. Or you're still using document templates where automation and manual processes could go away. Or what are those areas in your business that are the greatest time suckers that take up as much time? So the things that take you the most time, the things that are manual, those are what we build use cases out of, and then we can create custom agents or AI automations to address that. So it's, what we're offering is pretty practice area agnostic. We don't have yet anyway off-the-shelf solutions, but many law firms have half a dozen or so of the same kinds of issues and problems, but I'm sure we can come up with some ways to help save you time in your business. Without question. I'm almost definite about that. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I've talked to other wills and estates attorneys. Yeah, it's a lot of paperwork. Paperwork and manual process are very much in line for taking a look at how to automate with AI and really reduce a lot of the time that it takes. But thank you for the question. Rosemary, I'm sure you must have some questions. I don't have any questions because I'm not an attorney. Uh-huh. So I'm curious about this. Okay. And so, I mean, we'll talk afterwards. Sure. You know, even though we market, it's a particular niche market, the concept really is transportable to really any, any industry. I just happen to have a lot of experience and background in legal. I also have background and experience in banking and professional services and other industries. But my passion is for legal because it's an industry that really can be well served by AI and automations, but still has incredibly high standards for governance and data security, which is what we're all over as well. But yeah, if you, if we can talk offline, that's fine. Mark, any questions from you? I think for me, when I get questions about AI, and there's so many different applications, whether it's how do I improve review time and so forth. One of the things that more the traditional on the lawyer side, you're seeing more and more requests for how do I apply this to the business of law, whether it's contract management, vendor management, certain elements of labor and employment, not the practice, but within your organization. So more on the business of law side. And as with my, our long-term friendship and my legacy, it's more on the administrative operations side. I'd love to just get a short input from you on how you're seeing those challenges and what you're hearing in the marketplace as well. Yeah, you raise a great point, Mark, in that, you know, I just came back from the legal week here in New York. Yeah, there were a gazillion eDiscovery and, you know, there's some really big players in that space. Yeah, that's not what I'm really competing against. And to your point, at least half, if not more, of what I focus on, and my background is in operations similar to yours. Is I look at the areas that are outside necessarily of the legal practice itself. And all of the areas that you mentioned can definitely be enhanced by AI. And for a larger, or a larger law firm that has deep pockets, they can probably get some off-the-shelf product out there that's been around to do those kinds of things. We can easily build a more current a more contemporary and a much more effective product with what we do, because we build it with AI from the ground up. Most of the legal tech solutions that are out there started as legacy products 20 and 30 years ago. They may have AI infused in their product, but it's as an afterthought. The difference is we built AI from the ground up. We build it with governance in mind. So all of those things that you mentioned, yeah, we're building custom solutions and we expect to have, for those repeat kinds of applications, we'll build some marketable products down the road. But yeah, we see that, that's why I mentioned where are you consuming your time? And we know small to medium-sized law firms, yeah, a lot of it is in the admin area. A lot of it is in the non-legal practice. And it may not be the way it was 20 years ago, pushing mail carts around and fax machines and copy machines and cost recovery and those kinds of things. I think we've migrated to the digital era. Legal still has a lot of non-core legal practices that could be enhanced, I believe, through the infusion of AI. If that's helpful. If not, no. Yes. No, that answered. Thank you. Yeah. So again, it's, we offer this discovery session to really sit down with anyone in the legal space and we look at everything in their business, not just the practice of law, but we look at essentially where their time is being diverted towards. You know, what are the time sucks? That's why I mentioned something like onboarding. How do you process? New clients. I know at my wife's firm, a paralegal gets on the phone with a new customer and spends 30 to 40 minutes on the phone with them, trying to talk them through and figure out if they can get enough information to fill out a manual form that gets handed off to a partner to determine whether or not they want to move forward and, and do some other steps to see if this is a viable client. Largely manual. Trial Lift we designed because most trial attorneys, everything is in their head and it's an incredibly laborious, time-intensive, and pressure-packed skill that they've developed. Trial lawyers are like actors in some way. They're pretty extraordinary. But we wanted to build something that could really accelerate and lift them up and using AI to do predictive analysis, for example, and things like that. So there's a lot of opportunities, to say the least. Great. Thank you. Sure. Any other questions? All right. We originally had a 3-minute bio break, but since there's only a few of us on the line, why don't we just get into our next slide here? Yeah, we've covered a lot today from identifying the core problems that you face to understanding responsible AI and the solutions that we offer. Now let's talk about that next step, because if you're ready to reclaim your time and truly transform your practice, this is where we begin. It's about moving from uncertainty to a clear, actionable plan before we look at what to overhaul in your practice. This is a focused conversation. To chart your course. We guarantee our work, same as I have for the 25 years I've been supporting law firms with my consulting services. So let's look exactly about what you would get from this initial assessment. So you've seen how your firm can be transformed, and it all starts with this single focused conversation. This isn't a sales pitch. It is a diagnostic session designed to give you real answers, not just more questions. For just $849, you get a 2-hour one-on-one session with me in your offices or remote, where we'll pinpoint your biggest AI opportunities from those areas that are sucking your time and involving manual processes. And places that you just feel you can't take yourself out of, and map a clear path forward. This investment is less than 1 billable hour for most partners, and it's a fully creditable amount towards the Phase 1 work if you decide to move forward with us. So you get that money back. This is about gaining clarity and a roadmap where, whether you work with us or not, Satisfaction is guaranteed all the way. You have my personal guarantee on that. So let's book that session and get you started on the path to more efficient, fulfilling practice. We're taking only 5 initial customers at this point, so we'll put the link in the chat if you wanna sign up, please. If you have any questions about the offer, feel free to put them in the chat or just raise your hand as well. Rich, I think it was a, in one of the emails you sent, do, will we receive a video of this or oral or? Okay. Got it. Yeah. You'll get a video of this and also I'll send the slide deck to everyone as well. Thank you. Sure. So what are the follow-up costs? Rich? I know it's customized, so it, but in a general kind of, I mean, from low to high end or something. Okay. So the first month we price at $11,497, and that includes one automation or agentic solution that we do all the complete training for. We spend time doing the deep dive discovery. This does, this does involve a fair amount of time and effort and work on our side and testing, training. There's a lot of moving parts here. And then we support it in an ongoing fashion. And then if you want to continue on with us, it's about $10,497 per month in which we provide another Agentic automation solution, continue to support and evolve the first one. And then it really depends on— the engagement is month to month, and then it really depends on how many opportunities that we indicate, uh, or that we design, that we were able to uncover in that first discovery session. But generally, most firms have at least 5 or 6 different areas that we talked about, manual processes, time suckers, et cetera, that we uncover that in our roadmap that we can tackle and implement over the course of that. And everything is fully supported in an ongoing basis. So that's what it would entail. Does that answer your question, Rosemary? Yeah, I think so. Okay. Awesome. So for the, actually for the $10,497, you would get How many of the, how many items would they get AI addressed at? They would get one, one, one major solution per month. There's a whole process involved with that. It probably wouldn't involve the law firm partner or the leader, but it would go in and perform discovery on all the people that are involved in that process. Then we write up a use case that we share it with the client, and then we create the, the agentic or the automation in our laboratory. And then we set up a sandbox to show it to the client. Then we implement it perhaps with a small trial group. And then from that point, we'll implement it for firm-wide use. And then we'll do all the training, all of the ongoing support. And everything is fully guaranteed. Okay. Yeah. For $10,000 a month or thereabouts, you get a solution that will easily pay itself back probably inside of 1 or 2 months, or in some cases far less than that. It actually seems low, but I guess you're targeting the smaller firms. Yeah. We're targeting the smaller firms. In full disclosure, I'm part of a larger consortium where we target mid, mid-sized law firms where we actually create enterprise caliber solutions. So we could go either way. It's just a different, different design and deployment, but that's why we, our work is on the enterprise level. Our work fits inside either the Microsoft or the Google infrastructure. So it's all leveraging and built inside of that. Okay. Good questions. Nikolina, are you still on? Could you put the link please, if anyone would like to check out? Yes, already in the chat. Okay. Thank you. Welcome. All right. I want to thank everyone for coming today and listening to our presentation. Yeah, we're at an interesting kind of crossroads with AI, and particularly with legal, with a lot of the statutes cropping up. There've been over 1,000 court cases so far where false citations have found their way into court. Many judges also are beginning to use AI cautiously, but That's why the ability to have citations analyzed and validated 100% is really so critical. And what we, which is such a big, big point for us to maintain. And AI is only moving, is moving this year at a very accelerated clip. And it'll be tougher to keep up with. We have a autonomous agents coming out this year. Quantum computing is on the horizon. There's a lot of really interesting advents that are primarily driven by AI and automation, which is why, again, it's so important that we incorporate the governance piece because there are a lot of, there are a lot of failed AI deployments out there. I think the average number these days is 60% of AI deployments fail, and that's largely because the use cases are not clearly articulated and identified, or they're using the wrong AI model. They don't have governance. Many firms today are using AI without any governance structure, which is really dangerous. You've got AI plugins in browsers now that can do lots of great stuff, but they're also susceptible to vulnerabilities. So the, the need for governance and guardrails is so critical today and will only get more and more critical for tomorrow, which is why it's such an important piece of what it is that we do. All right, why don't we wrap up from here? Thank you again, everyone, for coming. It was wonderful to see you. Thank you, Richard. Yeah, you can certainly book another call through our, the link that we provided and have a blessed afternoon. Thank you, everyone. You too. Thank you, Rich. Good to see you, neighbor. All right. Bye. Take care. All right. Take care, everyone.