Fresh concepts, platforms, and products emerge almost daily, and the Simon brothers are consistently vigilant, ready to embrace any technology that could further elevate their service to an expanding clientele.
Robert reveals that he was recently in New York as part of a panel discussing a new Thompson Reuters’ acquisition called CaseText.
“It’s a co-counsel feature,” Robert says, “an AI solution that is essentially your associate partner on steroids. Its prominent offering, CoCounsel, introduced in 2023 and fueled by GPT-4, serves as an AI legal assistant. It quickly provides document review, legal research memos, deposition preparation, and contract analysis within minutes.
“We’ve been using it to do extra deposition prep,” he continues. “We can put in documents from experts, and it will fact-check in minutes rather than hours or even days. We’ve also leveraged another solution called Even Up which automatically creates demand letters using AI. It’s much faster so it’s a tool that our staff uses regularly so they can extract all the data from the case management platform and create the demand letter. Right now, they’re test-driving a new feature that allows people to create automatic timelines that are hyperlinked to medical records to get rapid answers. Again, these are tasks that took tens of hours for lawyers to do and are now completed within seconds. We can go through cases quickly to see if it’s something we want to take. If the case isn’t for us, we push it to Attorney Share.”
Attorney Share is yet another software this astute techie lawyer co-founded. Just as the name implies, information is quickly exchanged between attorneys, something that is particularly useful when fielding as many referrals as the Simon Law Group receives.
“I think this is the future,” he says. “It’s all going to be so efficient that attorneys will have time to stay in the lane they love to do, rather than spending valuable hours with this drudge, but very important, work. For instance, I like trying cases, especially spine injury cases. And, if it’s something that’s outside our specialty, this program will quickly locate a specialist lawyer who does that. Using Attorney Share we can quickly and accurately find the best partner to make sure the client gets the best result.”
So, we couldn’t help but ask, where does this leave up-and-coming associates or paralegals whose jobs these were? Will they be replaced?
“Not at all!” Robert is quick to assure these people will also be freed up to do much more interesting and gratifying work. “In fact, associates will get more exposure faster to the real work of an attorney. It can open a huge door for law students.”
According to Robert, more lawyers are exploring their own dream of opening either a small firm or solo practice, keeping the lid on expenses and the number of staff necessary.
“They start their own firm and have all the tools and ‘man’ power they need to compete,” he says. “They can use resources like mentorship groups through Justice HQ and immediately be connected to a huge network of attorneys and firms so they can receive referrals right away. To ensure this is used properly, and only by those qualified, attorneys must have at least three years of experience to participate. What’s great is that even people who are still somewhat fearful or don’t want to learn technology can still use their goodwill and credibility to make the most of connections and associations they have withing the legal community.”
Aside from the efficiency and speed, there are many great benefits that help even longtime attorneys return to the joys of the law, having time to concentrate on those aspects that were their inspiration back in law school.
“It seems that back in law school we all were eager and passionate with pure, altruistic views and sadly too many of us lose that,” adds Robert. “There are so many things that could weigh you down and turn passion into drudgery with things like tremendous student loans hanging over your head. Because of this sizable debt, a lot of young attorneys accept positions that have more to do with money than love for the work. Many have to go to large firms where they know they’ll be putting in their time for at least seven years on a partnership track just to answer discovery. It’s not going to be like that anymore.”
