AI Is Changing Trial Prep—Not Replacing Trial Lawyers (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: You seem so excited to do this. I mean, no, legitimately, it's actually kind of incredible. I mean, I remarked when you came in here, you get your light blue jacket on, your t-shirt. I mean, you are a happy guy. And, you know, I think a lot of people facing Tesla in that kind of a case would be completely stressed out. So you wear it well. It's incredibly impressive.

[00:00:21] Speaker 2: I have basically been, as a result of building the team, as a result of doing all the things that we've done, I was able to make a choice about a year and a half before that to basically become a five-case lawyer, maybe a ten-case lawyer. Five of them are in Tesla cases and another five cases that are just of interest to me. And that's all I do when I'm a practicing lawyer, which is about 60% of my time. 60% of my time is just focused on that. The only way I could do that is if I just singularly focused and locked in on it. And how I knew I had gotten there was in preparation for trial in the last case. Tesla had this one expert, one guy alone from Exponent, who had billed over $975,000. Jeez. And I took his deposition. And in the course of that deposition, I realized I understood this stuff better than he did. Wow. And I was like, I've got him. That's so cool. I've got him. There's a few of us who are out doing this. And I've got a couple of colleagues who are doing this at a high level. And I respect the hell out of them. And I've learned a ton of it. And we all stand on each other's shoulders.

[00:01:28] Speaker 1: Camaraderie amongst plaintiff's lawyers in that regard I think is extraordinary. It's one of the coolest things about it.

[00:01:33] Speaker 2: In fact, I'm more conversant in it than Tesla's lawyers. Because in Miami, for instance, they had six lawyers at counsel table. And they had 11 lawyers in the first two rows along with their staff. And it was really interesting to me that the different lawyers would handle different experts on liability. And they would know that one issue. But they would ask questions. And I'm like, did you all never get in the room and all talk at the same time? Because I do all the time. And I did all of the liability. So I know everybody's role. And I'm going to do that again.

[00:02:01] Speaker 1: How many is your trial team? Three. It's build a great firm that can allow you to even do something like this. Dive in, understand the details of the case incredibly well. How do you think about applying technology to those cases? And where? And where does it make sense? And where does it not?

[00:02:18] Speaker 2: You mean in terms of the technology we use for the case? Sure.

[00:02:23] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[00:02:23] Speaker 2: Yeah. I take the path of least resistance whenever possible. I mean, throwing extra bodies at the case to, quote unquote, build time is of no value to me. Right. And so it really is all about finding ways to kind of work smarter and to be more efficient. One of the things that this was really one of the first trials as various, I think, AI tools have finally matured to the point where they can really effectively help to get you 50% of the way there, to help with that doc review, to help with that review of that 97-page order, help build out, as we had to there, two different trials. Because I was in federal court in Miami. There was a summary judgment motion, a Daubert motion that didn't get ruled on until 10 days before trial. So there was some stuff that I was thinking we might not be trying that case. And then to be prepared to try it. And again, then to have the tools and the team to be prepared to, again, quickly pivot and then candidly work our ass off for the last 10 days. I am sure.

[00:03:24] Speaker 1: Was FileVine helpful to you? 100%.

[00:03:28] Speaker 2: And one of the ways, there were a number of for instances, but some of the deposition tools and really with the AI tools now, there were a couple of moments during the case where I was literally working on, for instance, one of my experts directs and or certain evidence that I knew I would think I would want to get in. And I was like, wait, I know somewhere in this 96-page order, the court mentioned this thing, mentioned that this evidence applied to this. And so I just asked FileVine's robot, where in the court's order did it say this and give me the citation? And it was like, boop, boom, here it is. And there were those kind of moments, right? And helping me, for instance, one of the benefits of these being federal court cases is everybody has to do these very extensive federal court reports, these rule 26 reports. And so I would then have the AI. These are like the big evidentiary disclosures. Exactly. That the experts would write. And I would say, here's their four reports. And in this case, because they withheld evidence and there was a whole bunch of other issues, and I would throw it in and I would say draft me a direct examination with citations. And it gave me something that got me 50% to 60% of the way there. And I will tell you what that translates to in real time is rather than spending 8 to 12 hours to prepare that experts direct, I spend two. It's fantastic. But where it has really been exceedingly helpful just as of yesterday, I'm talking to my appellate lawyer who's preparing the post-trial motion. And he's like, hey, can you ask your AI where in the trial transcript the judge talked about this issue? And we all knew there was two or three times that we had this discussion. I dumped the whole 16 days of trial transcripts in and say, tell me when this issue was discussed. And just on trial day eight and the afternoon on page 14, there was a robust discussion about this. On trial day 14, there was a discussion about this. Here, there was only three lines mentioned it, but blah, blah, blah. And it gives me the sites, and then I click through, and I send it over. I am so glad. And that's huge, man. I mean, seriously, to put that in real terms as well, that's the kind of thing that I used to have to have, most likely a law clerk, not even a paralegal. I needed someone with some legal acumen. I literally could look at four to eight hours of a human's time was handled in under 30 seconds with a file on AI.

[00:06:15] Speaker 1: That's so great.

[00:06:16] Speaker 2: That's for real. That's real value.

[00:06:19] Speaker 1: That's just awesome. But I also think, like, the leveling of the playing field. The 17 attorneys going on 30 or 40 all against you, and now there's something out there that can actually help, at least to a degree. Oh, absolutely.

[00:06:31] Speaker 2: No, there's no doubt in my mind that it is an absolute leveler. We were able to prove that they withheld evidence, and there's been a ton of stuff written about it, but they absolutely withheld evidence, and we were able to prove it, right? Because we learned anything in the digital age. Nothing is ever deleted. Right. It's all out there. We received a substantial, many, many multiple six-figure sanction award against Tesla, and that included us having to establish all of our time spent. I don't care, right? Because for me, culturally, we did consider it, actually. Yeah. But I actually told my partners, I said, if we do that, what we are doing is we are actively looking for our employees to lie to us.

[00:07:14] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[00:07:15] Speaker 2: When you start tracking every tenth of an hour, you have built into your entire culture Yeah. an idea that I want you to not be honest with me anymore. And so you're encouraging people to double bill and say that they were doing something when they weren't and then pretend they didn't take a lunch break. No, no. I want nothing to do with it. Whatever upside I would have been able to, some metric that I would have gotten from that, the value of that was nowhere near. It's so silly. Like, am I going to measure their utility by time? Yeah, I'm not. And all I'm going to do is I'm going to create this culture of mistrust and actively want my staff to not be honest with me. And that is the exact opposite of everything that I want my place to stand for.

[00:07:56] Speaker 1: Where do you think this goes? Do you think 10 years from now? I mean, one of the reasons I love this story is, you know, I spend too much time talking to folks in Silicon Valley who say things to me like, well, we're just going to replace lawyers. You listen to your story and you think, bro, I don't know what you're talking about. That is impossible. Right.

[00:08:19] Speaker 2: But like, where does this go? So here's what I could say. Robots never going to be able to try the case.

[00:08:25] Speaker 1: No, of course not.

[00:08:26] Speaker 2: Right, because that fundamentally is not an IQ issue. It's an EQ issue. Taking it back to where we talked before we started. Right. It's about emotional intelligence. It's a human experience. You can never teach a neural network to have that kind of emotional intelligence, to understand the arc of that timeline and how to take all of this data and to put it in a way that is the emotional, motivating, empowering way. And especially for those of us, I think, who are early adopters, we are going to get the return on that far greater than those who figure this out five or ten years from now. Because they will already be so deep in the hole it's going to take a while for them to dig out.

[00:09:11] Speaker 1: For sure.

[00:09:12] Speaker 2: If I have, though, the hope of what it can really do, I do think it can provide tremendous access to justice. I do think a lot of transactional type work. Yeah. The idea that AI becomes a tool for getting the cases, the right cases, to the right lawyers. Huh. That is something. Because right now, we have this perverse situation where the people who get the most calls, the people who get the most market share, are often the people who are just simply spending the most money. I've seen some of the advancements in AI intake. And if there is a way that we can use AI to get the right people, the right clients, to the right lawyers, who are truly the experts in their field because they know how to do it. They're the subject matter experts. And they're not just the one who have spent the most money. Because that's what we're seeing now. Most of the people who rank high in most markets are not the best lawyers. They're the best marketers. And so if we can get the right people to the best lawyers, and there are AI solutions to get there, then that's a beautiful thing.

[00:10:26] Speaker 1: It is.

[00:10:27] Speaker 2: And I think that is something, if I had a wish list of things that it would do, in addition to the optimization and the efficiencies and helping people to have better quality of life and all of that, which I think all of it can truly come from this. But if we could do that, I think there's tremendous societal good. And it really is the leveling of the playing field.

[00:10:44] Speaker 1: Do you think you and I seem like we're close to the same age? I think I'm 45 years old. I just turned 45 this year as well. Yeah, so there we go. Do you think the generation right below us, are they going to be trial lawyers? I wonder. Not even that AI is going to be doing the trials because I'm with you. That's never happening. There's the Seventh Amendment, but also I just think trial is such an engrossing and intense thing that requires just tremendous context. But as a society, I think we get so much out of that confrontation that the law brings that sort of bends the arc of justice. Do you think that's happening with the younger generation? Are you helping that? Do you feel like it's your responsibility to bring those lawyers up and get them in the courtroom? 100%.

[00:11:28] Speaker 2: I don't think we are going to see a shortage of trial lawyers in the future. I think, in fact, what we can show is that this can be incredibly rewarding and incredibly important and work of deep and ultimate concern. But you can also do it without having three divorces, a substance abuse problem, and a mental health breakdown. Right? And I think that that's where the good of so many of these AI tools can really help to balance out. You can do it, and yet you can do it without sacrificing everything else. And if that is what we are able to show the next generation, through the adoption, the early adoption of these tools, and the integration of it into what we do, then I think we're going to be, they're going to be lined up around the block.

[00:12:26] Speaker 1: I could not improve on that one bit. Brett, thank you so much. Truly an absolute honor, my friend. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. That was awesome. Dude, that was so good. Thank you.