Using AI to Stay Competitive

00:00 Jack Zinda Welcome to the Effective Lawyer, a podcast for ambitious attorneys who want to improve their practice. My name is Jack Zinda and I'll be your host. Hey, Jack Zinda here. Welcome to the episode of the Effective Lawyer podcast. Today we're going to talk about some cutting edge stuff, artificial intelligence, machine learning. How's all this going to affect your practice? Are you all going to have a business? What's going to happen next? And to help me go through this topic, we have our star business development person, L.G. Hey, L.G. 00:42 LG Pustmueller Hey, Jack. How's it going? 00:43 Jack Zinda It's going great. I'm excited to talk about this. 00:45 LG Pustmueller Yeah. So I have a couple questions here for you. First off, how have you seen AI impacting the personal injury landscape so far? 00:55 Jack Zinda That is a great question. So, you know, right now there really hasn't been much of an impact with artificial intelligence. And I think in what we do, I think people are kind of experimenting, nibbling around the edges and trying to figure out ways they can make their practice more effective. I've seen some ways that firms have been utilizing things, you know, such as drafting and reviewing documents, but it's still in its infancy and I haven't really seen anyone yet do something super effective that's making a big difference in their practice because. But I think it's coming here in the next six months to a year. 01:28 LG Pustmueller How do you envision AI assisting with some routine tasks like document review process or tasks that the paralegals and support staff do? How can you see this being very helpful? 01:41 Jack Zinda Yeah, so I think that's where we're going to see the biggest impact right away is going to be in routine tasks that paralegals and legal assistants are doing. And I think the spot to watch is what are the spaces where these things are already being outsourced to companies, maybe using workers india or other countries that a lot of American based people aren't doing. So for example, we do deposition summaries in all of our cases and I think that is something that AI is going to be really good at doing in things such as creating medical timelines then as well as reviewing documents for discovery purposes and identifying what those are. I also think it could be effective in even doing things like calendaring or putting together, you know, agreed scheduling orders based on some parameters of the people's calendars. 02:29 Jack Zinda And I think there'll be these small use cases, when you add them UP, will eliminate 10, 15, 20, 30 hours of work that are currently getting done by different team members. So that's where I think the immediate impact is going to be in the next few months. And. And I think you really have to be on top of this because that's going to allow firms you're competing with to really watch their costs as they're growing. And you want to make sure you keep up with that trend. 02:55 LG Pustmueller Beyond just the tasks that the staff is doing, how do you think AI will change the way that the firm interacts with clients? 03:03 Jack Zinda That is a great question. So I think that firms are going to have to be really careful about how they implement this so they don't really kill their client service. I can tell you right now it is very obvious when you're talking to an AI. I've gotten the voicemail as I don't know if you've seen that where someone calls you using AI, it is like so obvious that it is AI and it's actually really. It's almost more annoying than a recording because it's. They're kind of trying to be that, but they're not really. And I think if law firms, especially in this space, go overboard with that, I think it could be a real challenge. Now, where I think. Because I think people get upset, but where I think it could be very helpful is things like giving routine updates via email. 03:45 Jack Zinda You know, maybe it creates a summary of where the case is at, it sends it to the client and the attorney, and then the attorney follows up. Hey, do you have any questions? Do you want to set up an appointment? I think it could follow up after the client went to a medical appointment to see how they did what happened, or even schedule meetings. I could envision. It sends an automated text out to a link that then it schedules an appointment for you to meet with the client. I also think it's really effective in documenting client conversations. We're using an app right now called Firefly that we put in all of our meetings with clients. And it's awesome because it records it summarizes it, and it saves it to the file automatically. 04:22 Jack Zinda And that saves a ton of time of the par having to put it the notes in and save it in the file itself. But overall, I think it'll have an impact, but I think you have to be careful on what you're using it for. I've heard of some firms looking at using AI for intake. I think that's a huge mistake, and I think people are going to see a much lower close rate if they do that. 04:41 LG Pustmueller Yeah, absolutely. Do you think that AI could play a role in settlement negotiations? And if so, how might that change the dynamic between the parties, that's exciting. 04:51 Jack Zinda So, you know, how could it affect settlement negotiations? I think right now with our cases, the bad guys, the insurance companies and the defense have more information than we have. They've got thousands and millions of cases that they've resolved that they see verdicts, that they could see the outcomes on those. I could see it helping for getting a better sense of what a case's value is based on historical data that we can collect. Our law firm created something called the Vault, where we put in every outcome we've ever received, and anytime we hear of an outcome, we'll put it in there as well. And we try to see if we see trends to associate with the current outcome of our cases. 05:26 Jack Zinda The other thing that I think you could be really effective for is doing focus groups and mining that data for what you think the outcome is going to be. But again, I think a little bit it is buyer beware, because every case is different and there's going to be a lot of subjectivity, no matter how you look at it. I don't see a day where AI negotiates on your behalf with the defense. I think a lot of how much they pay you depends on how good of an attorney they think you are. You know, how good did you do at presenting the evidence? And I don't know if it's going to be as data based as people would like or hope it would be. 06:03 Jack Zinda If you'd like a copy of any of the things you heard about here today, or to set up a time to talk about one of our team members about a case, please go to Zendalaw IO and we have amazing resources, downloads, guides, and you can set up a time to talk to us if you want to talk about how we handle things or any case in particular. 06:27 LG Pustmueller Looking kind of at the downsides of AI. Speaking from a security, regulatory, ethical and accuracy standpoint, what do you think that lawyers should be aware of when using AI? 06:41 Jack Zinda That's a great question. You know, looking at all of the pitfalls of AI, you know, ethical, regulatory, legal, I think first is you need to know what you're doing and not rush out there and just use your clients as the guinea pigs. You know, the first thing I think about is like, confidentiality. I was looking at OpenAI the other day, and the one off the shelf I don't think has as much confidentiality as people think it might. And so you have to be very careful about what information you put into their system and know that could be used in answer later. On I know their Enterprise Edition has higher levels of security and confidentiality and HIPAA compliance, those sort of things. So I think that's the first thing. Confidentiality is going to be really important. 07:22 Jack Zinda The second is I treat it like a law clerk. If I'm doing research, you know, I'm going to review it, I'm going to see the citations, I want to see the work, and I want to be very careful how I use that document in that particular situation. Ethically, you know, I could see attorneys and businesses getting in trouble if they're using it too often to, you know, maybe using it to review resumes. And because you have one ethnic group in your firm in, associated with like a type of last name or a name, it eliminates people with different ethnic group last names. And I could see that being really problematic if firms start leaning on it for those types of decisions. And you just getting to make sure, you know, it's a tool and you got to understand how it's working. 08:05 Jack Zinda I, I also think attorneys could get in trouble for malpractice or missing deadlines if they lean too heavily into AI and they're not checking the work themselves. 08:14 LG Pustmueller So you mentioned that you haven't really seen as much AI in present day, but where do you see the role of AI in personal injury law firms 10 years from now? 08:22 Jack Zinda That's a great question, man. Ten years from now, that's really tough to think about. You know, they'll probably be our overlords and we'll be working for them. There's some really big areas that it could have a huge impact. So, like if AI is able to get autonomous driving vehicles, that would change the landscape significantly. And I think, you know, a lot of PLOs would not have as many cases, but it would be great for the public and great overall because there'd be way less deaths from cars and trucks that may be further out than 10 years. I think that's been more of a challenge than people think. And if that does come into fruition, you know, we're going to have to really focus on different practice areas and other ways we can help our communities and help people that are hurt. 09:01 Jack Zinda When it comes to the jobs and things that are going to be done, I don't think there'll be as many, you know, impacts on people getting laid off or getting fired due to this. What I notice in a lot of firms is they have too much work for the people they have and they can't afford to hire enough people to do it all well. So I see a lot of law firms that are forced to, you know, do things not as well as they would like or cut corners, and I think you'll see less of that. So I think our work product will get much better. I think there'll be a higher satisfaction of work for both the lawyers and paralegals because they'll be doing less of the things they don't like to do, you know, such as document review and things like that. 09:39 Jack Zinda I do think there will be elimination of some jobs. I don't know what percentage, but I don't think it'll be the jobs that people are really thrilled to do. I think it'll be the ones that they're doing while they buy their time to find their. Their permanent career or something like that. I also think there'll be a much greater help in things like strategy and advocacy. I could see setting up AI bots that are able to help you strategize on a case, come up with your opening statement, brainstorm how to investigate it as the technology gets more savvy and the feedback loops get bigger and bigger. 10:11 LG Pustmueller So you talked about some of the ways that AI can help maximize efficiency of tasks and processes. What advice would you give to personal injury law firms that are considering integrating AI into their practice but haven't yet? 10:22 Jack Zinda I would say start right away. You know, start playing with it, start testing it. It's going to go from a nice to have to a must have pretty quickly. And if you are so far behind the eight ball that you have no idea what you're doing, you're going to be in trouble. Not just from a, you know, competitive standpoint, although that'll matter from a life satisfaction. From a cost standpoint, I think eventually you'll start doing worse league work because your competitors are going to be doing using it at a high level. So I'd say play with it. Be careful, use, you know, fake cases to see how you can integrate in your practice and kind of take it a little bit at a time. 10:58 Jack Zinda But I would definitely dedicate some mind and mental energy into experimenting with it and using it so you can stay up to speed on what's happening. 11:06 LG Pustmueller Awesome. Anything else that our audience should be aware of when it comes to AI? 11:12 Jack Zinda No, I think, you know, those are great questions. I think we covered a lot of it. You know, just to recap, I think, number one, make sure you're testing out and using it. Number two, know what you're using it for and know if the work is being done at a high level. You know, number three, be really careful of ethics, confidentiality, and the quality of the work you're putting out there. And number four, don't be afraid. You know, world is always changing. This is an evolution, and I think overall it's going to be a positive impact to all of us. Well, this has been great. I really enjoyed talking to you, lg. 11:42 LG Pustmueller Thanks, Sean. 11:44 Jack Zinda And till next time, you know, reach out to me on social media. You can email me or go to our website, zdfirm.com always happy to help. Thanks a lot. Bye. Thanks for listening today's episode of the Effective Lawyer. You can learn more about our team and find other episodes of our podcast at zindalaw.com as always, we'd appreciate that you subscribe, rate and review the podcast. Thanks.