By Pablo Yannone Sancho, Journalist at GLTH
Carlos is one of those Advisors who knows legal tech even from before it was known as that. Indeed, he has dedicated his life to one of the first legal tech solutions, which appeared in the 90s.
He defines himself as a hardware designer at heart, since he studied two engineering degrees many years ago, and he dedicates part of his life to research and investigation within this field. Despite that, he started to move into software in the very late 90s. He was definitely turned into a software designer when he was working at SAP.
It was after SAP that he joined a company called Tikit, highly specialized in legal tech (when it was not called legal tech). At that time, they were just a “consulting services company specialized in the legal sector.” What did they do?
“We helped law firms define the different processes that they had internally, and then we applied technology.” That was 2005, and the importance of Knowledge Management within law firms was increasing.
Dive into some Carlos' insights
Carlos’s vision of businesses gets inspiration from the early seasons of The Office. “Duralex Celdex,” he claims as a mantra which translated means: “The law is harsh, but it is the law.” More accurately, “you have to play by the rules,” even though they are difficult to follow. This thought does not have much to do with The Office, since Michael Scott is not precisely a lover of rules and order. But, as Carlos says, “I just have a blast seeing how bad you can run a company.”
He has always said no to shortcuts. In his opinion, it is not synonymous with “trying to do things well.” And, after 30 years of experience, he can tell that this manner has “paid off,” even though he has had to deal with “long roads.” He has flown over the Atlantic more than 200 times, so he has a lot of expertise in terms of long roads.
During these journeys, he has time to think about the future, an aspect that attracts him a lot and has much to do with his passion for computer science. “You're always trying to figure out what you have to do and how you can help.” For Carlos, what awaits us in the future is better than today's reality, the same as today's reality is better than yesterday's.
Due to his job and his passion for travel, Carlos has been to many places. What do they have in common? Buildings. “Nature is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but I always like what humanity can actually build,” says Carlos. His favorite places have been, to date, Amsterdam and Denver.
The power of good Knowledge Management
Good Knowledge Management needs computer science software to be much more efficient and faster by improving the research, production, and storage of information. “You're going to start a matter from 50%, from 60%, from 70%,” claims Carlos. This has two main effects:
“The first one, of course, is the margin. If you are going to put in fewer hours, you are going to get more benefits out of that. The second one, and we tend to forget this one, is what we call time to market. How long does it take for your law firm to provide a full answer to your client? So if you already have 50% of your matter done, you're going to be able to produce a really quick answer to your client. And also, you are going to be able to handle that answer to your client much faster.”
Why did Carlos refer to the fact of speed twice? Indeed, it was just twice in appearance:
“First, you're going to be able to give an early assessment because very quickly you're going to be able to tell your client, hey, this is how we're going to solve this matter. But your client could say I'm not okay with that. And then you can produce those documents that you give to your client.”
Okay, it sounds very interesting, but how can we reuse that information?
So, just imagine that you need a Service Provider Agreement (SPA) between a Chinese telecommunications company (not named in the article) and a European telecommunications company (not named in the article). And it has to be written in Portuguese!
Well, you could not find it if it had not been because, before that, a lawyer had found the document and classified it precisely as “Service Provider Agreement (SPA) between a Chinese telecommunications company and a European telecommunications company written in Portuguese.” Notice that it is in Portuguese, but it could have been in other languages, depending on the company and their requirements.
For that classification, the lawyer used computer science software which allows classification of those pieces of knowledge really well by using legal taxonomies of the salaries, by using keywords, and by extracting different clauses that you are going to handle in different ways.
This process of classification has been enhanced by GenAI in the last 18 months: “What we're seeing is that it helps us, suggesting some specific classifications, making some summaries, helping us out with anonymization, with redaction, etc.” “Now, instead of doing all of the manual work, what we're going to be doing is reviewing.” “GenAI is going to tell you, this document talks about this particular topic, or I can make an abstract of this particular document. But it's not going to tell you, you know what, compared to the rest of the documents, this is a good one. That's what actually the knowledge professionals, that's the added value that they bring into it, which is all of the experience.”
There has always been interest in improving knowledge management within law firms as it is a very profitable aspect. “No matter how much money you put into knowledge management, you're always going to get a super large return.” Since the 2000s, many enterprises emerged with the purpose of covering this need, and they will keep appearing and changing as technology does, as we have seen with GenAI.
But, above technology, it is more important to know the need we want to cover. That is why, before saying goodbye, Carlos recommends: “Try to understand really well, you know, the legal process behind it and then apply technology. Never do it the other way around.” He knows what he is saying, as he has come across clients who just wanted to buy a solution. “What do you want it for?” he asked.
“Sometimes you realize that he's not referring to that particular product he wants to buy, he's referring to a different type of solution,” Carlos claims. “So yeah, it's very, very important to listen to your clients, to analyze their needs, and not to take them for granted.”
CEO, Lexsoft Systems
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