Client-Centric Solutions: Rethinking People, Process & Technology

Transcript

Taimur Ghaznavi 00:00

Cat’s out of the bag; we are not going to deliver traditional legal services in the way that we always have. I’ve got a complex issue at a client and they need some combination of people, process and tech to do it. Clients are demanding it. We are going to figure out a way to do it. So how do we not just help you with the project, but become your long-term co-develop partner in a legal service?

Alex Su 00:20

I’ve always found that just being more attuned to the business, putting on a business hat rather than lawyer hat or a legal hat has gone a long way. And I think what that means in practice is that sometimes you do need to put metrics and KPIs around work. Sometimes you do need to kind of speak the language of the CFO.

Tim Haley 00:33

There’s always moving pieces, right? There’s always ambiguity. What’s the best business solution? What’s the best talent solution? What’s the best tech solution? How do we move all of these pieces together like in a 5D chessboard kind of way?

Taimur Ghaznavi 00:48

We’re seeing a fundamental shift right now in the legal industry, both from where you can buy services and how you can buy services and how those services are delivered and enabled.

Candice Reed 00:58

This is Leveraging Latitude: Cultivating a Full Life in the Law. Please join us on our journey as we discover how to leverage the hard work of becoming a lawyer to achieving success and leading a rich and fulfilling life in the law.

Alex Su 01:13

Hey everyone. Welcome back to Leveraging Latitude. Today we’re going to be diving into the hot topic of legal innovation, ALSPs, client-centric solutions, and I’m joined again by my colleague and co-host Tim Haley. Tim, how are you doing today?

Tim Haley 01:28

I’m doing great, Alex. How are you doing?

Alex Su 01:30

I’m doing great too. I’m so excited about today’s guest.

Tim Haley 01:33

Yeah, it’s a mutual friend of ours, one of the great innovators in the legal space right now. We are so thrilled to welcome our guest, Taimur Ghaznavi, who’s the head of Konexo U.S. Now Taimur is the head of Konexo U.S., but he’s also joining us today on his own behalf, and he’s obviously not speaking on behalf of the firm or any of the firm’s clients. Fit that disclaimer in as we’re all lawyers.

Alex Su 02:04

Yeah, we’re so excited to have you here, Taimur. And before Taimur introduces himself, I thought I’d share a little bit about his background because he and I first met at CLOC a few years ago, gotten to know each other over the years. Taimur brings over 15 years of experience in legal and risk consulting. And he’s worked at the intersection of legal innovation and legal services. And right now, he leads U.S. operations at Konexo, which is Eversheds Sutherland’s in-house alternative legal services provider. He’s seen firsthand how the legal ecosystem is evolving and brings a very unique perspective on blending law firm models with flexible tech-enabled solutions. So Taimur, welcome to the show. We’re so happy to have you here today.

Taimur Ghaznavi 02:49

Thanks guys. And I’m very excited to be here with you as well. Been looking forward to this conversation for a while, Alex. I’m glad we’re able to make it happen. So let’s hop in.

Alex Su 03:00

Yeah, let’s get into it. So big picture, what is Konexo? How does that fit into the framework of a law firm?

Taimur Ghaznavi 03:08

So Konexo is the firm’s global alternative legal service provider or ALSP. So, first and foremost, we are a built-in practice group, not a separate entity or a separate affiliate or anything like that. And just to help set the stage of Konexo – maybe it helps to just take a step back and talk about the history of where we came from. About 15 years ago, as Eversheds was providing guidance and legal advice to a number of financial services clients throughout the UK, they kept getting asked as part of that, “Well, what trends are you seeing in this space? What are my peers doing? Or how can I become a little bit more efficient or even save costs?” So as part of that, this idea of a consulting agency built into Eversheds came about, started as Eversheds Consulting, and that continued to evolve. There were some interim resourcing components of it built in. And then as that was evolving in 2017, Eversheds merged with our U.S. firm, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, and became this global law firm, which is now about 3,000 attorneys across 70 offices in more than 30 countries. In 2019, Konexo officially launched as a branded team there in the UK and also in parts of Asia. And then in 2020, we brought Konexo over to the U.S. and really started to make that another offering with our U.S. component as well.

Taimur Ghaznavi 04:35

I joined Konexo about 8 months ago in December, and now looked under the hood, understood really what we do both from in the U.S. and then globally. And really what we do, I’d bucket it into a few different things, right? There’s the interim resourcing flex talent component of it where we’re helping our internal teams scale up for large peaks in demand, but then also providing those types of services to our clients when they need them for a number of reasons, right? Leave or a secondment, a number of different areas where they may have a particular need.

Taimur Ghaznavi 05:15

Under my purview in the U.S. also sits everything in the e-discovery and litigation support space. So, the large-scale reviews, the investigations, the sanctions look-backs, the productions to regulators, the technology and the review and the process around that sits under my purview here in the U.S. as well. And then I also have everything that’s in a we call it a special projects type space, right? I’ve got a complex issue at a client and they need some combination of people, process, and tech to do it. It could be a large-scale contract remediation. It could be a research project – I’m entering into a new jurisdiction, or I’ve got a new product and what are my risks associated with it? Or it could be I have a question about my technology stack, and I need to understand what’s the best out there from a legal tech space and how to get through with that. And then finally, in the U.S. also managed services sits under my purview. So how do we not just help you with the project but become your long-term co-develop partner in a legal service, whether that’s contracting or research or anything else that you could have a legal component but a wrapper around it to continue to deliver that at scale? Globally, we also have an HR consulting team as well as brand and NIP, and that’s essentially how we operate again in the U.S., UK, and Asia as well.

Tim Haley 06:39

Awesome. Taimur, I’ve got a question for you. Before we dive into the weeds a little bit more on all of the stuff you were talking about, just big picture, what is the… I mean, you’re a captive ALSP, so your client is the firm. What is the advantage to the firm to have its own captive and what’s the advantage for you as a captive having your own client?

Taimur Ghaznavi 07:10

Yeah. Look, I think this is the right model at the end of the day, right? I’ve seen it from in-house, from government, from consultants, from a standalone ALSP out there in the Big Four world and now within this law firm environment. And I think this is kind of the best of all worlds in my opinion. So, the advantage for the firm is… I mean, look, candidly, cat’s out of the bag, we are not going to deliver traditional legal services in the way that we always have for the last decade, century plus, right? Clients are demanding different ways to buy and deliver legal services, whether that’s breaking them down in their component parts and figuring out whether it’s I still need the most expensive attorney for it, or another level of associate or a contractor. Whether it’s this should be really technology enabled or if there’s any other options out there, right?

Taimur Ghaznavi 08:06

So, I think that is work that the market is demanding changes. And so from a law firm perspective, the answer in my opinion has generally been, “Well, do we just try to fight and keep this work? Or do we try to raise our rates to make up for it, because we’re not going to continue to keep those hours? Or do we partner with somebody else that can eventually take this work on because we can’t do it?” I think Eversheds is in the very beneficial position here of having thought about this 15 years ago, this idea of Konexo being a captive is not new. It’s not like trying the toes in the water. It’s saying, “We have a built-in solution for this. Clients are demanding it. We are going to figure out a way to do it.” So, I think that’s the positive from the law firm perspective.

Taimur Ghaznavi 08:57

From my perspective, I am wholly incentivized to drive law firm revenue as well because that helps me get the investment. It helps us get out there in front of the market. And most clients have been asking me not, “I need this solution over here in the corner.” It’s, “Here’s the legal outcome or the business outcome I need, you show me how to get there.” And whether that’s 80% Konexo and 20% of your Eversheds attorneys or vice versa or in many instances, “Here’s the problem I have, you tell me how you can solve it.” So that’s I think the other way that I really enjoy. And look, the good thing is this is what we do, we sell legal services. So, every partner, counsel, associate is incentivized to sell this particular product and model at the end of the day as opposed to this being one of a hundred things that might be out on a sheet for somebody as well.

Alex Su 09:52

I think it’s super interesting that you mentioned that clients want you to show them, “Hey, how do I get there? How do I get to drive those business outcomes?” And obviously there are multiple offerings that both you and Eversheds can provide. Tell me more about your ecosystem partnerships because I think it sounds like part of the value you’re also adding is your judgment as it relates to finding partners within the ecosystem who can help provide solutions to those problems. And here at Latitude, we’re very fortunate to be one of your partners. Tell us more about how you play that role for your clients.

Taimur Ghaznavi 10:31

Yeah. Yeah, no, it is a good point, and it reminds me of a tough but important lesson I learned doing some large-scale implementations, global implementation at one of our clients. And I think the concept was like do not try to be everything to everyone, right? That is where things will break down, whether it’s from a quality standpoint or process or pricing. You cannot be everything to everybody, but what you can do is be resourceful and say, “I may not have the answer” – and have the wherewithal and self-awareness and say, “I may not have the right answer, but I know who does, and let me bring that partner to the table for you because we’re going to together put this wrapper around it and provide the right answer for our client.”

Taimur Ghaznavi 11:15

So that’s where working with you all has been great because there are components where we certainly have some resources on our side. We have former Eversheds attorneys, clients, et cetera. And then there’s always this need to say, “Well, Tim and Alex, we need some scale, we need a specific ask.” We have a need to look in both of our worlds and say, “How do we solve this problem together for a client?” And I think at the end of the day, it’s the right thing for the client, which I kind of take this approach of, if you do the right thing, you’ll generally end up in the right place at the end of the day. So, I think that’s been really helpful. We do that in a couple of other places as well, whether it’s in our discovery hosting or in some other areas, in the areas that we practice as well.

Taimur Ghaznavi 12:01

I think it’s the right end of the day answer. The difference is we can only bring on those partners and ecosystem partners that have the same end goals, same level of quality, same understanding of the market. Because at the end of the day, the clients are saying, “Eversheds, you solve this problem. It’s up to you how you solve it, but if it goes wrong, I’m coming to you.” So, we are incentivized to make sure we find the right people, the right partners in here to deliver those end results for our clients.

Tim Haley 12:33

Yeah, that’s a great answer. It’s a great question too, Alex. I think the legal ecosystem has been evolving immensely, certainly in the last 10 years. And I know there’s a lot of practitioners out there now who we could use the word legal ecosystem and they think to themselves, “What are you talking about?” But I mean, on the base level, it’s the software programs you use, right? It’s the expert witnesses you have, it’s the discovery companies you use, it’s all of the outside folks that help you be a better lawyer and help the firm be a better firm to their clients. Taimur, you came into this about 8 months ago. Could you describe the process of just briefly figuring all of this out – figuring out who your partners were, figuring out where your goals were? How did you educate yourself into this, into your little space of this legal ecosystem?

Taimur Ghaznavi 13:36

Yeah, I mean, so the good thing is I felt like this is the aggregation and accumulation of every position I’ve had over the last 15 years. I’ve had experience in discovery space and then in the consulting space and then global managed services side and even some recruiting where we were doing some managed services before, right? So, I was like, “Okay, I generally understand what I’m doing here. Now, let me make sure I get it within this particular environment and from that ALSP world.” So, I think the years in the legal transformation space also helped me in that when we would go into a client’s environment, we’d say, “Okay, what’s your people strategy, your process, your tech, who are your outside vendors, what’s working, what’s not?” Do that kind of SWOT analysis and figure out where those opportunities lie and align that with, “Well that’s great, but what is leadership actually telling you that they want to do? How does this fit into the broader strategy? I want to run really, really fast, but is that something that I’m going to get the investment and the support to be able to do?”

Taimur Ghaznavi 14:37

So I think looking under the hood, doing a real deep-dive assessment of the reality of what we have here and not just what’s on paper and what’s in our brochures, but where have we done it? What’s been the client feedback? What has been the internal law firm partner feedback? And then how do we actually make this real, right? What’s the next step of where we want to go? So I think that took some time, certainly. I’ve had over at this point I think 90 different individual meetings with partners. I’ve had 50 different client meetings, vendor feedback, working with ecosystem partners like you all to say, “Well, what are you seeing in this space?” So, I think aggregating all of that information and saying, “Okay, well, based on that, here’s my best approach onto what I think we need to do to go forward.”

Alex Su 15:27

Can we dig into that? Because I know you and I talked about this at CLOC when we met up, but also right before we recorded, we shared about how you have been traveling and going on a listening tour. What are those trends that you’re seeing and hearing these days?

Taimur Ghaznavi 15:43

Yeah. The trends are a bit all over the board, and I’m breaking it down into where I’m seeing from a maturity level –

Alex Su 15:50

Sure.

Taimur Ghaznavi 15:51

… Of my clients, right? And I think that’s the one thing that I keep coming back to is legal departments are not built the same, and even within sectors or industries, they’re not at the same levels of maturity that you may expect, right? So, I have some legal departments that are coming to me and they’re saying, “I need to do more with less.” I’m like, “Okay, well, what does that mean for you?” Well, for them that’s, “Well, I can’t hire full-time people, so I just need three surge resources.” But for others, they’re saying, “The rest of my business is moving so fast and I’m just not able to keep up. I need scale.” Right?

Taimur Ghaznavi 16:27

So yeah, people is an answer for a while, but eventually, how do I actually keep up with the demand and not add significant amount additional resources? So that’s how do I drive technology, how do I drive process? How do I even maybe send some of this back to the business and enable them with the right tools so that they can do this themselves so I’m not becoming the bottleneck in that place, right? I think I’m seeing a little bit of those both, I don’t have enough, I need to cut costs versus I just need to speed up and I need to keep up with everything that’s going on.

Tim Haley 16:59

Taimur, when a client asks, “How do we do more with less?” What’s your process in advising them on something like that, something as broad as that?

Taimur Ghaznavi 17:11

Yeah, well look, in a past life, I think the techie in me would probably want to jump straight to a tool and say, “Hey, here’s the technology solution that’s going to solve this all for you.” But I think my experience leading some legal transformation in financial services taught me to take a zoom out and take a look at the broader issue and the business issue at hand. And knowing that tech is just one tool in my toolbox, right? And whether that’s an AI solution or workflow solution, it’s one component of it. And I get it. Right now, we have so many of our clients that are getting asked and pressure from either their GCs or somebody on the board saying, “What are you doing with AI? How are you getting it into your systems? And this vendor showed me I could press a button and get everything delivered just exactly when I want it.”

Taimur Ghaznavi 17:57

So, we’re fighting a little bit of that hype and even some fear from those internal teams saying, “Well, is this actually going to potentially replace me or am I going to be needed for this or not?” I like to take a step back and start with the basics, right? I was like, “Well, why are we doing this? And is it because the business needs to move fast or is it because there’s a cost issue here or is there a new risk that you need to underlie? And what exactly are we trying to fix?” So, looking at the actual issue at hand and saying, “Well, where are we not already doing this? How are we doing this in the not most efficient way possible?” And then looking at the people side of it, well, who do we have to do it, right? If this is something that one of our attorneys can handle or somebody in a paralegal team or one of our vendors can handle, do we already have a solution, we just need to bring it together?

Taimur Ghaznavi 18:45

And then I look at the tech side of things of saying, “All right, now that we have a process, now that we have generally an idea of who can do it, how am I going to use tech to really drive that scale?” Because sometimes it’s just a playbook issue. Sometimes it’s actually just training of, you actually have the solution, you just don’t know how to potentially use it. So, I like to look at those. And the takeaway for me really is transformation doesn’t always have to mean bleeding edge GenAI, and not every process even has the same ROI, right? So sometimes just incremental steps that gain a little bit of efficiency are more than enough, but then you build in that people solution on the back end of it and say, “Here’s what’s going to get you the rest of the way there.”

Taimur Ghaznavi 19:30

I bring this back to that ecosystem approach of I consider me and my team’s jobs to say, “Let’s understand our client issues and then bring the right potential solutions to the table.” Whether that’s on the people side of the things, whether that’s a tech, whether that’s a third-party provider or ecosystem partner like Latitude to say, “Here’s the proper solution that is going to get you to where you need to be.” The other thing that I’m seeing is just the level of overall improvement in maturity of the legal ops functions. We are seeing that become more ingrained with a number of legal departments and it’s not just their first legal ops person, it’s their second or it’s their third or fourth. And it’s moving beyond just quick outside counsel rate fees. It’s going into technology stacks, it’s going into process. So, I think that role is starting to evolve and mature, which is good for the legal department overall. We’re starting to become less of a standalone risk reduction team to now you’re a strategic part of the business and how do you continue to be viewed in that lens as well.

Tim Haley 20:34

Taimur, that’s a great point. When you’re talking about the legal ops function enabling a legal department to go from not just a risk or cost center to a strategic business partner, what does that look like specifically?

Taimur Ghaznavi 20:51

Yeah, so I think it’s aligning the lawyers with the business folks and understanding their business needs as a starting point, right? And look, I mean, I think this is no secret. In law school, you are not necessarily taught how to practice law in that sense. You’re kind of taught the theory of it. You’re certainly not taught how to take what should have been that thirty-page risk memo down to the three sentences that the business owner is going to read on their phone and say, “Here’s the answer, yes or no.” So, it’s aligning that kind of dichotomy of here’s what traditionally being a good lawyer looked like versus here’s what being a good business partner looks like. And it’s not always easy, but I think having those discussions, having the cross training is important.

Taimur Ghaznavi 21:46

We do these things called in-house legal academies at Eversheds where we really train up some of the upcoming GCs in a number of our client’s legal departments. And the skillsets that we’re seeing that worked well 10 years ago I think have certainly shifted. And that’s the other thing that we want to make sure we’re providing that training to our clients and to their junior members to be more that business partner, right? So, table stakes is quality legal work, but the collaboration, the EQ, the components of social and understanding where somebody else is coming from and then being more of a business minded or operationally minded even professional are becoming more and more important for our lawyers, right? And again, did we teach this in law school? Probably not. Some of it comes through learning and being a professional, but anything that we can do to help accelerate that, I think that’s overall value-add for our industry.

Alex Su 22:46

What’s a big message that you would want to give to all of your clients or the firm’s clients? What are they not recognizing enough of? If you could take draw from all of your experiences, from everything you’ve seen and heard, it sounds like there is obviously a shift from law firm style memo to something more succinct, but are there any lessons that if you could just say it to all your clients at once, what would that be? I’ll share in my experience, I’ve always found that just being more attuned to the business, putting on a business hat rather than a lawyer hat or a legal hat has gone a long way. And I think what that means in practice is that sometimes you do need to put metrics and KPIs around work. Sometimes you do need to kind of speak the language of the CFO. That’s always my answer and it’s not really a fair question because I had the answer for myself before I asked you, but I would be curious, because I imagine this is something that you’ve talked to and dealt with a lot of clients, and you may have seen some patterns.

Taimur Ghaznavi 23:47

Yeah, no, I think that goes back a little bit to what I was saying around if you become a bit more operational-minded and what’s working across your other leaders of services and organizations within your company, it’s kind of having that same level of rigor and saying, “Look, I understand in the past if the CEO or someone from the board came and asked me for these metrics, usually it took me two to three weeks, maybe four, and it’s kind of a best guess and some anecdotal evidence of what’s actually working.” To the extent you can start having real answers and how that adds value and how that drives ROI, and the next time you go and ask for a resource or investment on this new technology or training or send somebody to a CLE, any small thing, that just makes the discussion and the conversation the likelihood that you’re going to get what you’re asking for that much better.

Taimur Ghaznavi 24:48

So I think that’s certainly a component. And then I’d even think about this, back to a little bit we were talking about around the same theme of ecosystem, right? Challenge the way that you are buying your services in that sense and whether even what you’re doing internally is always going to be the right answer in 3, 5, or 10 years down the road, right? We’re seeing a fundamental shift right now in the legal industry, both from where you can buy services and how you can buy services and how those services are delivered and enabled through technology right now, right? So, if I think about it like, in 5 years from now, if I didn’t go invest in these areas or didn’t go explore these new areas, where does that leave me? I think one, compared to the competition, but where does that leave our clients as well? Are they going to be that much further behind their competitors because, I don’t know, think about it from a bank, the client onboarding process now takes that bank 45 days, whereas their competitors who are able to enable it with some tech and some people can really get it down to 5 days. Are you now leaving money on the table because their process is just easier somewhere else? Whatever that looks like from our client’s perspectives, we need to be attuned to those business problems as well as providers.

Taimur Ghaznavi 26:09

So, I think that’s one of the key areas I’m trying to focus in on is here’s the legal ask, what’s the business ask behind that and where is that coming from and what is that going to drive from you within your actual company? Other than, yes, I know I need to redline this contract for you really quickly.

Alex Su 26:25

That’s so good. It’s like framing the legal work in the lens of the business needs. It’s well said.

Tim Haley 26:33

So, I’m going to flip this, same question, but instead of your clients, your legal department clients, your client’s the firm, so how do you apply those processes on the law firm itself?

Taimur Ghaznavi 26:51

Yeah, so I think just like any transformation that you undergo, you’re going to have your champions and supporters, the people that are kind of on the fence and the people that are like, “Ah, I’m not sure if I believe in any of this. And come back to me when it’s all ready to go.” We certainly have some components of that, but what I try to do within the firm is show how I’m going to essentially help their clients get better at whatever it is they want to do, right? That’s, at the end of the day, what really moves the needles for a lot of the law firm partners here is it has to be really good, first and foremost, it cannot introduce additional risk, quality level has to be there. That’s the table stakes.

Taimur Ghaznavi 27:36

How do you help the client look better by introducing a new idea, a new way of working, reducing their cost or their budget overall, right? Those couple of options – if I can deliver that, then that makes the conversation really, really easy, right? I think the other component of it is there are just certain tasks and certain workflows that a traditional law firm structure is just not set up to handle, right? Tomorrow, if a massive M&A deal comes in, can we start to handle it? Yeah, but if I need one hundred people scaled up in the next couple of weeks to do a contract remediation, that’s probably not where most law firms are ready, willing and able to go do that, right? So, we’ve got a solution for that, however, right?

Taimur Ghaznavi 28:24

If it’s now the client is saying, “Well, I got through this remediation and that was really tough, but how do I make sure I don’t do this again?” There’s a legal strategy discussion and then there’s the operationalization of that and saying, “Now here’s what you need to go buy. Here’s how you’re going to configure your systems. Here’s how your operating model needs to change. Here’s how we can help you actually go make that into reality over the next six-to-twelve months.” So, I think that is helping our internal partners and our clients seeing us in a different lens, expanding really that when they consider us a strategic partner from legal advice into broader enterprise strategy as well.

Alex Su 29:06

Yeah.

Tim Haley 29:06

That’s great.

Alex Su 29:06

And as you’re thinking through all of these strategies, obviously AI is an increasingly large part of that. Tell us your thoughts on that because I know Tim and I, we’ve been holding back, but very curious to hear your thoughts on this latest iteration of generative AI and AI broadly.

Taimur Ghaznavi 29:25

Yeah, look, it’s exciting and it’s scary and there’s a lot of hype and a lot of fear and a lot of actual real gains all at the same time, right? It’s just a massive mixed bag of I think emotions and vendors and tech and sales all at the same time. So, it’s overwhelming for most, if not everybody. But what I’m seeing, at least what I see is real or I think these couple of things, right? So, productivity gains are real and happening every day, right? I’m sure you see this. These tools are making me a better writer, someone that can summarize things, just checking my work in a sense of is there another way to say this or clean this up, right? Those are simple kind of table stake things.

Taimur Ghaznavi 30:17

Where I’m seeing some good values in these legal-specific platforms that are starting to come out there, now there’s no shortage of them, but it is closing that gap of here’s an enterprise software, go prompt it how you want it as a lawyer to, “I’ve got a pretty good prompt for you to start with and now you can just tweak it.” And that gap is what I see a lot of my clients having issues with. Even us internally, I’ve had that issue of here’s a blank slate versus here’s you’re already into step two or three, go make this better, right? That starts to drive a little bit more adoption. That being said, where I still see a number of my clients even struggling with is the policy and governance side of this.

Alex Su 31:03

Sure.

Taimur Ghaznavi 31:04

The policy that they put in place two years ago is kind of already outdated and may not even be the right decision if now we’re seeing how these tools are actually working going forward. So, it’s how do you use it with the right guardrails? I think at the end of the day right now, these tools are powerful. They’re not infallible. Guardrails matter maybe more now than ever, but there’s a need to continuously update that, keep up with what’s happening in the market, continue your training around it, make sure you’ve got a couple different perspectives, both from the hype train of this will solve everything and change everything to the I’m not sure if we can trust this completely yet, and then make your kind of decisions in the middle is where I’m seeing.

Tim Haley 31:51

Yeah, it’s a tough space right now in AI because you have different tools, we’ll call them different products out there. Some are very sophisticated and very niche, and then some are very broad, and just in terms of, enter your chat term and start talking, but then the users are the same way. You’ve got some really sophisticated users who know how to get in and get a lot done, and then you’ve got people who are staring at that chat box wondering, “What do I do now?” So how much of a challenge is that that you’re seeing either from your client’s perspective or from the lawyers that you serve perspective? What are the biggest challenges you’re seeing just in terms of getting some semblance of a level playing field, for lack of a better metaphor?

Taimur Ghaznavi 32:45

Yeah, I’m not sure if we’re going to have a level playing field in the short run. You look back at, I don’t know, if you look at contracting or you look at discovery or you look at anything else that was legal transformation in the last decade or plus, you still have companies that aren’t on a level playing field, right? Some have no idea where their contracts are across the entire enterprise versus some are five years into their CLM journey and know where everything is and have workflows and can run metrics. And I think we’ll continue to see that, right?

Taimur Ghaznavi 33:18

We will see folks that – I just had a call a couple weeks ago with a client that was thinking or a prospect that was thinking, “I think I’m ready to get some Copilot licenses.” It’s like, okay, so brand new into this. So, what does that look like? What are the do’s and don’ts? How do you start prompting? What should you put in here versus you shouldn’t? Making sure this is aligned with your policy. Versus I have another client that I think is one of the leaders in this space, they’ve been doing this for two and a half plus years. I think they’ve got nearly 100% adoption in their legal department and LLMs with the base layer over top of it, really driving use cases. And they’re at the point of saying not, “Hey, how do I get started.” But, “How do I run faster? I need people that can come in here and help me fine tune that prompt and get it to how it can actually go into an agentic workflow and not just solve problem one, but how does it trigger prompt two and then trigger prompt three and go from there.” So, they’ve got that, as I was talking earlier, they have that problem of scale of how do I go faster because now everybody’s in, everybody sees the value and how do we go versus the other ones of, I’m at the starting line and I think I want to get going. How do you help me do it without immediately jumping into the deep end there?

Alex Su 34:38

What implications do you think there are for hiring and legal talent? Because you mentioned this wide range of appetite or phases of AI adoption. Are you seeing anything as it relates to whether it’s full-time hires, secondments, but also the type of outside counsel that clients want?

Taimur Ghaznavi 34:58

Yeah, I think there’s a couple of things that are happening, in my opinion. The idea of just adding people only full-time does not seem to be the answer for most. This idea of, “I need the right talent for the right tasks or projects,” I’m seeing that certainly increase. So that often looks like flex talent in my mind, right? So that looks like, “I need not just an attorney who’s done this before, but I need an attorney who’s done this and has tech experience and is available for the next six months, and then I’ll make a decision on whether it makes sense to keep going down this road.” So, I think because of the way the ecosystem has changed, both from a tech perspective and from a resourcing perspective and just the options out there, clients are taking a bit of that thoughtful pause and saying, “Do I keep doing this? Do I keep expanding and scaling the way I always did? Or do I need to look at my different options and move these chess pieces around a little bit differently?”

Taimur Ghaznavi 35:59

Makes sense in my mind. I think the subject matters, as I mentioned before, you’ve got to be tech-enabled in my mind at this point, right? You generally have to have that business-minded approach to it. And then I guess the subject matters of practice groups I’m seeing, always big around privacy, cyber, AI, but commercial contracts is certainly becoming a big one because of all of the vendor agreements that we’re entering into at this point and all those trials. And what’s changing in those terms I think is another area that there’s a lot of demand at this moment.

Tim Haley 36:36

Yeah, Taimur, what other trends, at least on hiring side, whether it’s flex talent or perm talent, or whether it’s industry-specific or people-specific, what other trends are you seeing right now?

Taimur Ghaznavi 36:51

Yeah, I think the other trend that I’m seeing is a growing level of comfort with this model. And Alex, I even just think about to when we met at CLOC years ago, this idea of flex talent or changing the way that you resource and the ecosystem around it was, I don’t know, in a couple of sessions hanging out somewhere in the back versus I think it was part of many, many, many discussions just this last year that I had with clients. So again, the maturity has grown, the level of comfort, the quality, none of this would happen if we weren’t actually providing quality people out there. The marketplace for this high level of talent has certainly grown. For better or worse, I think COVID probably accelerated that of people saying, “I want to work for twenty, forty hours a week now, and that’s about it, and I want to work from where I want to work from and I want to get exposure to multiple different types of industries.” That just kind of grew the talent pool overall. And clients are getting the benefit of that. So, it’s not just doc reviewers in that sense, which you obviously need that model as well, but it’s, “I need a former GC that’s got twenty hours a week that can advise me on something that my team just doesn’t have that experience in.” So that is a model that we’re seeing improve and certainly start to expand.

Alex Su 38:16

I mean, I see the same thing. And I’ll just double down on what you said because the point you made earlier about how legal work has to fit into the broader goals of the business. I mean, CFOs and leadership is expecting this sort of fluid thinking around resourcing from all of the functions, not just legal. It’s happening everywhere. And if you have a strong base of talent that can essentially do the work without committing to a full-time hire, especially for episodic up and down work, work with up and down volume, yeah, you want to take advantage of it and take a look at it. So, it’s very much echoing what Tim and I are seeing here at Latitude.

Tim Haley 39:03

Absolutely. I mean, we’re lawyers, so there’s always moving pieces, right? There’s always ambiguity, but even more so now, I think the industry is thinking of ambiguity, not just in the law itself, but in, all right, what’s the best business solution? What’s the best talent solution? What’s the best tech solution? How do we move all of these pieces together like in a 5D chessboard kind of way?

Taimur Ghaznavi 39:35

Yeah. I’ll give you another example of that. Going back to the AI piece where I mentioned some are saying, “Help me start.” Others are saying, “Help me scale.” I’ve had other clients say, “Can you just do this for me?” In the sense of, look, it’s going to take me… If I were to try to figure this out in-house, it’s going to take me months to get an RFP out, then a bunch of responses, I’ve got to review it all. Then I’ve got to pilot three or four tools, then I’ve got to get through InfoSec review, and 9 months or 12 months down the road, that tool is now outdated, right?

Taimur Ghaznavi 40:03

So, you as my law firm who I already trust with all of my most confidential data, and you already are running this level of technology on maybe my e-discovery stack for me, can you just provide that tool to me and provide that service to me? But I think that’s a really interesting and fascinating innovation angle that we should be looking at, right? It’s not unproven. We do it for discovery. So, is there a world in which the law firm starts to become the provider of both the tech and the services as part of that ecosystem? And I certainly think it’s worth continuing to explore as well.

Tim Haley 40:39

Taimur, these are great thoughts. And as we wrap up here, I want to let our listeners know that Taimur and I are going to be speaking on a panel on these very topics in September at the Legal Value Network’s LVNx conference in Chicago. Our panelists, Janice D’Costa from Meta, and Isaac Brooks from Thomson Reuters, Taimur, and me. So, you can hear another version of similar discussions live in Chicago if you want.

Taimur Ghaznavi 41:06

Yeah. And I’m looking forward to that Tim, one, to see you again. Always a pleasure.

Tim Haley 41:10

Yeah, always. Yeah.

Taimur Ghaznavi 41:12

But to be able to bring a bit of that client perspective into it I think is always great. And then just the general community and networking that always happens, those chance encounters of sitting next to whether it’s a client or a vendor or a competitor or even somebody as an industry thought leader and saying, “What are your thoughts on this?” And getting some candid, real discussion and feedback. I think those are the types of things that really stick with me a lot. So, looking forward to that.

Tim Haley 41:40

Where can our listeners connect with you if they want to learn more about Konexo?

Taimur Ghaznavi 41:45

Yeah, so you can certainly check out our website. We’re just under the eversheds-sutherland.com. I think under the services you’ll see a link there for Konexo, but LinkedIn is probably the best place to get in touch with us, just the Konexo LinkedIn page. You’ll see some pretty regular updates from our leaders. And then we also release a publication called Konexo Insights a couple of times a year that really aggregates all the trends and topics that are on top of mind for our clients, along with some podcasts that come out from the Eversheds Sutherland environment as well. So on a number of different legal topics, operational topics. So probably where I’d start to, if you wanted to hear more about this, that’s where I’d go.

Alex Su 42:28

Awesome. Well, Taimur, hey, thanks for stopping by the show today and love to stay connected. All of our listeners can follow along to learn more about you and Konexo, but we really appreciate you making the time to join us on today’s episode.

Taimur Ghaznavi 42:44

Yeah, guys, it was an absolute pleasure and thanks for allowing me to spend the time. Looking forward to the collaboration. And Alex, if I said anything dumb, just edit out and make it funny.

Tim Haley 42:56

That’s our job.

Taimur Ghaznavi 42:57

That should be good.

Alex Su 42:57

I’ll make it less funny by accident, I guess.

Taimur Ghaznavi 43:03

All right, gents, always a pleasure.

Alex Su 42:03

All right.

Tim Haley 43:04

Thanks, Taimur.

Alex Su 43:05

Thank you.

Tim Haley 43:09

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