Bob Ambrogi (00:07)
Welcome to Law Next PR, the podcast where we put a spotlight on the latest news coming out of the legal tech industry. This is Bob Ambrogi. And in each sponsored episode of Law Next PR, I interview a legal tech company about its latest news and developments. Today, we're looking at a new law firm litigation department research study from Ari Kaplan advisors conducted in partnership with Opus Two that offers insights on the litigation technology landscape.
Greg Blackman (00:14)
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Bob Ambrogi (00:36)
Joining me to discuss the new research are Ari Kaplan, Legal Industry Analyst and Principal of Ari Kaplan Advisors, and Greg Blackman, CEO of Opus 2.
Greg Blackman (00:37)
Okay.
Bob Ambrogi (00:45)
Greg and Erie, welcome to the show. And before we get into talking about the report, let me ask each of you to tell us a little bit about yourselves and your company. So Greg, you want to kick it off?
Greg Blackman (00:53)
Sure. Thanks, Greg Blackman, as you said, and I run Opus 2, are a software business focused primarily on litigation support for law firms and specifically the practice of law. So managing case and everything in and around.
case information and what we do is we basically apply technology to allow case teams to be more effective. Ultimately, we look for better outcomes from the information they're able to gather and we're able to effectively help with both efficiencies and capabilities of those teams that have to support the case loads that these firms take on.
Bob Ambrogi (01:32)
Thanks, Greg. And, Ari, how about you? Tell us about yourself.
Ari Kaplan (01:36)
Thanks, Bob. So I'm Ari Kaplan. I'm an analyst that covers the legal industry. I have published over 60 reports over the last 15 years focusing on trends in the legal space. They may include trends in corporate legal departments, trends in law firms. This report is a result of the privilege that I had to collaborate with Opus 2, really looking at key trends that are taking place in law firms and the sort of transforming nature of litigation.
Bob Ambrogi (02:04)
So you've conducted this new study on the litigation landscape and there's a lot of interesting findings coming out of it, but why don't you start by telling us, Greg, maybe you can kick it off, tell us kind of why you wanted to do this and what you hope to find out of it.
Greg Blackman (02:18)
Well, if we look at the why, we're always looking to innovate with our clients and find where is law headed? Where are these teams going? And what are the things that are coming that we can stay ahead of and stay on top of to support them? So we didn't actually have an outcome per se in mind. We more wanted to find out what we could about what
some of those firms were seeing and what was going on. That's where Ari and his organization came in to do that research and really start to open up and understand where are these firms struggling, where are the opportunities and what are the things that they might need. So I'll turn it to you, on the actual report. But our initial instance was, let's look and find out what we can to help our clients.
Ari Kaplan (03:02)
Bob, I always say that I get to do lucky work. Whenever I post on LinkedIn, I use the little hashtag of lucky work. And really, this was exactly just that example. Opus 2 really gave me the freedom to identify 30 of the most extraordinarily talented and accomplished litigation support leaders at firms throughout North America, mostly larger law firms, and to try to understand
Where are their opportunities? What are their challenges? How is technology affecting their role? What's their vision for the future? And how are their firms reacting? And so in the end, the report is called Advancing Litigation Support to Fuel Growth in a Changing Legal Market because litigation is clearly that field that's changing so fast from a data and talent standpoint that we need to figure out how to navigate as the road keeps changing.
Greg Blackman (03:40)
So hard to...
Thank
Ari Kaplan (03:51)
There are growth objectives that are driving how law firms are becoming so successful and profitable in this market. And that the transformation needs to be evaluated year over year to understand how important adaptability has become. And that's really what we tried to achieve because those guiding points are really helping teams to set a plan for 2025 and beyond.
Greg Blackman (03:53)
Yeah.
or become so successful and profitable in this market.
Bob Ambrogi (04:20)
So what did you find? mean, you just mentioned that these litigation departments are changing so rapidly. What do they look like? What's that change look like today?
Ari Kaplan (04:28)
Some of the key points, the key takeaways are really that litigation caseloads, case volumes, data volumes are all rising. 93 % said that the amount of data that they manage in an average case is increasing. 83 % expect those caseloads to increase this year into next year. 60 % said the conditions are of such a magnitude that they could pose challenges for their firm if they don't adapt.
Teams that stay stagnant will fall behind. It's not as if good enough works anymore. We are in this place in the market where things are happening so fast that you really need to keep up. And in fact, one of the things I'm sure Greg will touch on is that almost a third said that they're using case management solutions that are more than 10 years old. More than a third, 37%, use one that's more than six years old. They describe them as inadequate.
and their ability to adapt is limiting their efficiency, collaboration, and expansion potential, which really goes to whether or not they'll be able to sustain or achieve some type of competitive advantage.
Greg Blackman (05:28)
Okay.
Bob Ambrogi (05:40)
So we have rapidly evolving litigation landscape, case loads, data volumes, potentially outmoded technology at a lot of these law firms.
Greg, what do you take from that? What are the opportunities, what are the challenges for law firms in that kind of a landscape?
Greg Blackman (05:57)
Yeah, I mean, it's clear that things have to evolve and that the business of law and what you do in the firm can't just continue at those volumes. obviously, think AI has a big impact on that and where it could potentially take some of these firms.
in being able to create more efficiency and effectiveness of those firms. think that when you deal with data volumes that are exponentially increasing, you need other ways. You can't just throw bodies at it. It just doesn't work that way. And I think that's what a lot of the output of the report came to conclusions around, which was you can't just continue to do things as you were. You need to start to figure out how to take
the new technologies that are coming out, the innovative capabilities that are coming out. And that's where really Opus 2 has focused its effort. And that is, how do we enable, we don't look at AI as something new to just put out there, but rather how do you enable what teams are
doing to allow them to handle these increases in volume, these increases in caseload, these nuances that keep coming, the amount of data formats that come at these firms, the types of data that come at the firms now, the various sizes of those.
are just continually increasing. So technology plays a big part in what you can do to potentially enable your case teams that you have out there, the teams that are working on some of this. And that's really where Opus 2 has focused a lot of our effort. It isn't so much to say we're gonna redo what you do today. It's more about how do we make it better? How do we make it more effective, more efficient, and allow you to increase and continue to serve those clients?
Bob Ambrogi (07:34)
Ari, as Greg says, AI is clearly going to play an important role going forward. What does this study tell us about the extent to which litigation departments are using or preparing to be using AI?
Ari Kaplan (07:48)
Bob, one of the great things about this target group who share their perspectives is that, as you know, generative AI came into legal a couple of years ago or so, but AI has been used for more than a decade. mean, the folks in e-discovery and in litigation support are so adept at this technology from that standpoint and are now building on that foundational knowledge to...
understand and leverage generative AI. The generative AI really is a competitive advantage at this moment for those firms who really can deploy it properly and effectively and efficiently. 87 % said that AI assisted case management software is a competitive advantage because of, as Greg mentioned, the opportunities it gives teams in document analysis, in transcript management, in case chronologies, in case strategy, all of these manually intensive areas.
Greg Blackman (08:17)
Remember, the data that we to provide to the digital community is not the data that we provide the digital community. And that is where it's at. The data that we provide to the digital is not data And
Thank
Ari Kaplan (08:44)
that are critically important for managing litigation. Now, there's this wonderful advantage that we can deploy technology effectively using a case management system that properly incorporates it and then allow those teams to take advantage of the expertise in terms of trial strategy and in terms of client counseling and in terms of really creative thinking.
in terms of how to resolve a dispute. Someone said, which I thought was a great quote, general AI will essentially serve as a cliff notes for e-discovery, giving lawyers more high level insight and helping them create a more comprehensive strategy. And so those teams that really take advantage of it, also those teams that find ways to train holistically their groups on this and incorporate and collaborate with their clients really will see a benefit.
Greg Blackman (09:26)
I'm going to leave it at that.
Ari Kaplan (09:39)
beyond simply introducing new technology.
Bob Ambrogi (09:43)
Yeah. Greg, what are you seeing in what's reflected in this in this study is it seems to be a little bit of a tension between firms recognition of their need to innovate, their need to use new technology, their need to be using AI. And yet, as we pointed out earlier, some of them are still on using, you know, decade old technology. Some of them are finding obstacles to really innovating as aggressively as they probably like to be. So so
Greg Blackman (10:00)
Okay.
Bob Ambrogi (10:07)
What are you seeing out there in terms of what firms are actually doing and what they should be doing if they're not doing it right?
Greg Blackman (10:14)
Yeah, it's interesting. So we partner with most of largest firms in the world today. They use our technology and support that and what we find is that they're looking to consolidate technology into what would be much more of a platform approach. They get a lot thrown at them, well, firms, frankly. They get technologies, you
pushes every day from lots of different people trying to do this little tidbit over here or this little thing over there. And the problem is bringing that all together. And so what we find is that a lot of the firms are looking for partners that can bring all of this together. I think Ari just articulated it well, you the things that you've got specialty tools that can do things like.
go after depositions or help you with your transcript management or help you with your case strategy. They want more holistic, hey, how can we make it easier for our case teams to work across the board? So what we find out in the market is while people may start in a particular area, they may want chronology to start. That may be their easy, hey, let's go use a new set of technology to help us with automation of chronology using AI or something like that. That's just the beginning.
They need somebody that can expand with them and continue to grow with them so that they can use it for all of their case management, ultimately so that they have that platform capability. And we find that that's really what people are sort of headed towards. It is in certain cases, some firms are well ahead, other firms are getting there. But I think everybody's hearing, we're hearing the same story, which is our volumes, the data, the information, and what we're trying to deal with, we're not currently structured set up.
to be able to handle that on an ongoing basis. So they need to think about how do we start making changes to get ourselves set up for the next several years.
Bob Ambrogi (11:53)
One of the things that interested me out of it was that out of the study was that you found that 75 70 percent of firms are in fact using case management systems. But again a lot of those firms feel this need to upgrade or update the systems that they're using. What you know what are some of the advantages to a firm in using I guess a contemporary the latest in a case management system and what kind of considerations.
should a firm be thinking about moving toward a more modern system?
Greg Blackman (12:24)
Sure. you know, when we think about more modern system, again, how do you make it easier for the teams to engage with the information to get to ultimately a better result? And that's at the end of the day. So it's not the... You don't necessarily need the thing that has...
the most advanced one capability. You need something that makes it easy for your teams that you currently have in place to work within the framework of your firm. If I turn around and went to a large firm and said, hey, we're gonna change the way you do case management across the organization, they're gonna say, hold on, we're not prepared for that, right? So I think it's all about how can we meet you on your terms.
How can we help you with what you're currently facing? And then how can we give you that sort of forward looking platform so that you can think about more that you could do within the form? And I think where the current tech, the stuff that's been out in the market for 10 years, it is challenged in that, yeah, people got used to it and they figured out how to use it, but there's no future. There's no what happens when these new data sets, when the volumes increase.
when we need AI, when we want to start adding, et cetera, et cetera. That's when you're at a stop, basically. So the question becomes, hey, how can we help you to get to the newer innovative technologies that are ready for the next five years?
Bob Ambrogi (13:45)
Yeah. Ari, I'm wondering in your conversations as you conducted this study and as you put together the results of those conversations, anything surprise you about it? Anything really going to jump out at you as something you didn't expect to hear?
Ari Kaplan (13:59)
You know, one of the things that I was a little bit surprised by was that there was this stratification between the early stage litigation support teams and the late stage trial teams, those who are at trial in the courtroom and the fact that they're not necessarily aligned. And so there's huge opportunity for firms through a unified case management system, through technology for them to kind of become
Greg Blackman (14:16)
The is, this is not necessarily a problem. The essence of the working process is that we provide basic benefits of human technology, of human-department
Ari Kaplan (14:27)
a singular team that the thread runs from one end all the way to the other. That expertise on data management and data processing leads itself to the advantage all the way at trial. And that's a really, really significant issue. And you see an opportunity for firms, 57 % said that their trial
Greg Blackman (14:27)
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Ari Kaplan (14:45)
lawyers are using case management tools, which means there is a material number that could take advantage and could benefit.
from some of these things. So firms, you're starting to see them and Bob, you're a leader here in terms of giving people the opportunity to assess and evaluate their portfolios of technology, but you're starting to see this. People evaluate what's new more often. Greg alluded to this, but you're seeing people realize that they can use a case management software platform, a similar kind of platform beyond litigation, that there's an opportunity for much broader deployment. And they're recognizing that that investment
is going to go far beyond singular matter or something like that. So you're starting to see consistency in different policies. And I'm actually really excited by what the folks that I was speaking to are doing to try to secure buy-in, that there's a lot more reception at the highest levels of law firm leadership, recognizing not only the importance of technology, but the need to train teams.
in a unified way on how to use every bit of that technology. There's research that I've done that shows that people use only a fraction of full capabilities of a particular technology application. And so you're starting to see that change, which is exciting.
Bob Ambrogi (15:59)
Greg, what is the takeaway of this for law firms? How should they respond to these findings as they seek to innovate and remain competitive?
Greg Blackman (16:10)
I think, know, what we'd suggest and what you'd look at is step back and assess if you've got the right infrastructure, if you've got the right technology footprint, and if there are gaps.
how and what you might do to come at it from a more strategic perspective as opposed to patching something together. So think about it holistically, think about what might make the most sense and give yourself an opportunity to set yourself up for the future. think that the technology that's out there today is leaps and bounds ahead of what had been there in the past. And if you give that opportunity to your case teams and give them the opportunity to talk about where they've
they like to see and what they'd like help around. I think, you know, those firms would hear that there's lots of opportunity and lots of things that they could effectively go after and consider leveraging a lot of the new tech without doing it from just a pure, hey, let's just get new stuff. It's really about how does it fit to the overall firm strategy? If you've got that sort of, I'll call it a general approach that you're going to take to how you're going to handle case.
increases in volume, how you're gonna handle case changes in data and increases in data and how you're gonna incorporate Gen.ai into that mix. I think if you think about that strategically, you're able to come to a conclusion that this is the right path for us. And that path could be different depending on the firm.
Bob Ambrogi (17:33)
Are any last thoughts on this survey before we wrap up?
Ari Kaplan (17:37)
Yeah, I think it's really important that we acknowledge that half of the participants, people think that driving innovation is about, it might be about money, it might be about enthusiasm. Half the participants said that they have limited time for innovation and that's their most significant barrier to driving change and litigation support. However, investing that time is really what leads to a competitive advantage. the key to sustained innovation just requires
a way to empower change management and incorporating stakeholders into this decision and also showing them, as Greg has said, what the benefits are and how long those benefits will last. Really privileged to do this research.
Greg Blackman (18:07)
Thank you.
Bob Ambrogi (18:20)
Greg, any final thoughts?
Greg Blackman (18:23)
No, we'd appreciate the opportunity, an opportunity to talk to your constituents and all the folks that listen to this podcast. So, you know, really appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for covering this and super excited about working with and partnering with firms out there. If you want to hear more on how we're helping firms innovate and what we're doing, we'd love to connect and chat.
Bob Ambrogi (18:44)
Well, thanks, Greg and Ari for your time today. It's been a pleasure to speak with you and we will listeners, we will put a link in the show description to where you can get this report and read it for yourself. And that's it for today's episode. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube And you can find all of these episodes also on the LawNext Legal Tech Directory under the resources tab. This is Bob Ambrogi. Thanks for listening.