Litigation Nation

# Swell AI Transcript: LN - Ep. 58.wav

Jack Sanker:
Welcome Litigation Nation. I'm your host, Jack Sanker, along with my co-host, Danessa Watkins. As a reminder, you can find us everywhere you get your podcasts, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, etc. Today, we've got a wonderful special guest for you, Mr. Karl Seelbach, who's here from Doyle & Seelbach PLLC. Karl's been featured all over the place, the Law and Entrepreneur podcast, Power Up Your Practice podcast, the You Are a Lawyer podcast, among a hundred other places you could find him. Check him out on LinkedIn as well. Karl, welcome to the show.

Karl Seelbach:
Yeah, thanks for having me, Jack. Appreciate it. Glad to be here.

Jack Sanker:
I think it's especially given the topics we're gonna be talking about today, it's kind of important to get into like your credentials and why it is that you have such an interesting perspective kind of upfront. Three quick bullet points as I see it. Founder of a law firm, practicing lawyer, and tech founder of a legal tech company called Skribe.ai, right?

Karl Seelbach:
You got it. That's all so far. My family will probably murder me if I try to add anything else to that list.

Jack Sanker:
Yeah. So I blew right through those things. But like each one of those is a is a topic that's worth spending a lot of time talking about. And we can I think a lot of folks, technologists and that, you know, set of people would jump right to the third thing here, which is, you know, founder of a tech company. But I actually think it's worthwhile from our perspective to start earlier up on that list, law firm founder, practicing attorney. And I'll start with kind of a very basic and simple question, but where do you find the time for all these things?

Karl Seelbach:
Well, I think the easy answer to that is the legal tech company is a passion. So when I'm working on it, it doesn't feel like work. And, and quite frankly, the type of law that we practice at my firm, and the clients that we have, I would say, most days of the week, not all, but most days of the week, I genuinely enjoy working on the cases and working with my team. So, you know, I think it is important. That hasn't always been the case. And I think those of us who are able to find something that we truly enjoy, maybe you love it some days, but you at least enjoy it on the other days. To me, that's really rewarding, and I feel like I've finally gotten to that point in my career. And it wasn't always like that. I mean, I did all types of things that I would do as a good job on them, but I'd kind of be banging my head against the wall like, I don't want to do this forever. So I think it takes time to find your niche. And then once you find it, you know, that's really the time to roll up your sleeves and figure out how can I grow it? How can I get my own clients? You know, what does this look like in five years, 10 years?

Danessa Watkins:
Now, when you started your own firm, did you bring clients over or were you starting fresh?

Karl Seelbach:
You don't even know it, but that's a loaded question. So I will tell you that the thought was at the time that Trek and I left the firm that we were at, Trek Doyle's my law partner. The thought was that we were going to probably have two clients follow us. One of those was a big Fortune 500 company that you would recognize. And we were thinking we'd have anywhere from 10 to 15 cases probably transferred to our new firm. The other is also a large company that you would recognize the name of. But at the time, they were in a drought for litigation for the type of cases that we defend, which are primarily personal injury defense cases involving injured employees. We do lots of other things now, but back then, that was almost exclusively what we did in the PI world. And so long story short, they had one case at the time, which was a low point for them, And I learned the hard way that things do not always go the way you hope they are going to go or the way that you plan them to go when you exit a law firm. And so ultimately we lost the larger client in that move, and we really started. very hungry is probably the nicest way to put it. I mean, we had one client, one case, and frankly, my wife was pregnant at the time with our second child. I was kind of having sleepless nights thinking, you know, how are we gonna make ends meet? But it ultimately worked out.

Danessa Watkins:
And did your practice then, you said you used to do that type of PI, you know, employee injury type of work. How did it evolve over the years?

Karl Seelbach:
So that was actually, I would say, what Trek and I both enjoyed the most was personal injury defense work, particularly in workers' work injury cases, which in Texas, you don't have to have workers' compensation. So a lot of large companies, think like your Walmart, your Home Depots, your McDonald's. They opt out of workers compensation and they have these injury benefit plans that they put into place to manage their own workplace injuries and have a network of providers that are approved. And so that kind of is our bread and butter. Even today, we also do other types of. personal injury defense work, and we do commercial litigation as well. We have a couple of other interesting dockets that I won't get into right now, but the vast majority of what we do is personal injury defense. So, at the time we started the firm, to answer your question, we had a lot of hooks in the water. We knew a lot of people in that industry. But having been at a big firm at the time, most of them weren't interested in hiring us because our rates were too high at the firm that we were at. And that's not a criticism of the firm. It's just most larger firms of that size tend to have a certain rate that they need to charge just to make their business model work. And that's not a good fit for personal injury cases normally. So I was actually doing at the prior firm, Winstead, great firm. I was doing real estate litigation, finance and banking litigation, construction litigation, and this personal injury defense work. And what I found through that experience was I genuinely enjoyed the personal injury defense work more. I mean, I liked getting out and taking the depositions. I liked going to the site inspections. I found the cases just to be just more engaging. And so for me, for me, it was a great fit. And Trek and I made the decision together to try to grow that type of practice. So when we left with what we thought would be two clients, but ended up being one client, we knew what we wanted to do. The question was, how were we going to actually grow it and make it happen?

Jack Sanker:
What made you one day kind of look at your everyday practice and what you do in your day to day and decide, you know, hey, I have an idea about how I can make this a little bit better.

Karl Seelbach:
I mean, I think it's a couple of things. One, I was doing a ton of depositions and still do. But back then I was doing even more because I was the associate and the associates on that docket took most of the depositions. So a lot of the inspiration for Scribe and for trying to find efficiencies, you know, to make the practice of law easier are inspired by my own experiences. Right. So on the deposition side of things, I was going to all these depositions and I was constantly thinking, why does it take so long for me to get a copy of my deposition record? You know, why do I have to wait weeks for the transcript? Why is the video so frustratingly difficult to work with? Like, you shouldn't have to have a degree or a separate computer program. just to be able to go in and create and share video clips of the key evidence in your case. This should be simple. Growing up, getting out of college and law school and having the iPad come out and the world of apps in our consumer world be so easy to use, I would always think there has to be a better way to work with depositions. There has to be a less expensive way to take them. And so that was really what inspired Scribe. And my co-founder, Tom Irby, at that company had experience running a court reporting company. And so he kind of saw the same he saw the same problem. We had very similar vision of what the market should be like for capturing and analyzing testimony. And we ultimately put our heads together and launched Scribe to try to solve those problems and bring kind of speed, cost savings and modern tech to the world of taking and analyzing testimony.

Jack Sanker:
One thing that's so interesting is, you know, we're here in Illinois, and I think it's useful that you provide to folks, like you provided to us, the- Non-stenographic deposition. Yes, which is like a word that I was like, what are you talking about? Because we don't have that in Illinois, but of course it's a thing in federal court. And I guess this is a long way of getting at, why don't you just deSkribe.ai what Skribe.ai actually is and does?

Karl Seelbach:
Yeah. So, I mean, I think the best way to sum it up is Skribe.ais' mission is to really make capturing, analyzing and sharing legal testimony better and more efficient. And so historically for me, at least in my practice, and I think a lot of litigators and legal professionals who work with testimony share that experience of where's the transcript? Oh, we don't have it yet. What do you mean we don't have it yet? It's been three or four weeks since the deposition. Oh, we need to create video clips. Oh gosh, that's a pain. We're going to have to hire a vendor or maybe we're a larger firm and we have some type of trial technician or IT department that can help us create these video clips. And so, really, there's two offerings with Scribe right now. One is what you were alluding to, which is taking a non-stenographic deposition through Scribe Live That's available in almost all 50 states and either by default under the rules or by stipulation. And that allows you to sign on to a Zoom similar to this, have a certified notary oversee the proceeding, and you actually record and capture a non stenographic record. So what that means under the rules, whether it's the federal rules or your state's rules, is that the official record is the audio and video recording, which to me is actually very reassuring. Because I have had, and this is not to bad mouth court reporters, but I have certainly had transcripts where there were mistakes in the type of transcript. And I think a lot of us have seen that in the past. And so having the audio and video recording be the source of truth I really think is the way of the future. And it gives you some confidence that regardless of what the text says on the page, we can just refer back to the video and the audio and we can listen to it. So with that solution, you can take a remote or hybrid deposition, get a video sync transcript the same day you take the deposition, and then get a final legally formatted, professionally proofread transcript within five days. So it's very fast, and it's about 50% less in cost compared to a traditional court reporting agency.

Danessa Watkins:
Who do you have doing that review?

Karl Seelbach:
Yeah, so the review of the transcripts, so the transcripts is initially prepared with software. So the one that you get the same day is synced to the video in a web application. You can also download a PDF version. It tends to be over 90% accurate with most mistakes being the spellings of names or grammar or punctuation type issues. And then we have professional proofreaders that go in, that we contract to go in and read it top to bottom. We have someone on our QC team. I think it's actually three rounds of quality control that it goes through to make sure that it's accurate. And then the Skribe.ai team actually facilitates the errata process. So there is a review and sign process where the witness is presented with both the recording of the event, which again is the official record, but they're also provided a copy of that final proofread transcript. And they can either watch the video or they can read the transcript. And if they have anything they want to put on their statement of changes sheet, they can do that.

Danessa Watkins:
Just thinking about the RADA process, I've definitely, I've been on both sides of it, where you have a client who says, that's absolutely not what I said. Or on the other side, they're saying, no, that's not what she said. And having that video available right away, I mean, what an amazing tool to test whether someone's memory is accurate or not.

Karl Seelbach:
Yeah, I mean, it really, for me, again, I'm a defense lawyer, so I'm typically reporting to either an in-house counsel or a claims manager or risk manager. For me, it gives me a chance to quickly hop in and create a video clip and actually put it in an email. So you can actually use Scribe to create, not only create and download the clips, but you can share them with a URL. So just like you and I might share a YouTube video or some other type of video, You can do that with your video testimony. So I put it in my team. We put it in our reports. We file motions that have video clips embedded in the motions themselves. So it's a pretty cool way to level up your work product. And not only is it, I think, fun, But it actually, I think, can be more persuasive and informative because the person who is not just reading the testimony now, they're getting to see the witness. They're getting to look at their face, hear the tone of their voice. And I think there's something that can get lost on a page that comes across better in video.

Danessa Watkins:
Yeah. And I'm thinking about the reports that I've written over the years to insurance companies or general counsel. There's literally a section I would put at the top trying to physically deSkribe.ai the person and how they spoke and whether they had an accent, whether they had awkward hand movements. And yeah, I mean, there's only so much you can do with with paper.

Karl Seelbach:
So that's 100 percent right. And so so the first main offering that Scribe has is taking depositions through Scribe for remote or hybrid depositions. But we realize, you know, that isn't a perfect fit for everyone. Like, some attorneys, maybe they love in-person depositions, and that would be maybe 10% to 20% of depositions at this point. About 80% are remote or hybrid, according to most court reporting agencies that have tracked it through surveys. Or, you know, maybe they're in a jurisdiction that doesn't permit non-scenographic depositions. They have to hire an old-school court reporter, or they're just not comfortable. It's new, they're not ready for that, but they want some of the other benefits. We also offer for any attorney, no matter how the deposition was taken, if they have the video of the deposition, they can upload that into their Scribe account and still get a lot of those other benefits that we were just talking about. The ability to create video clips, Scribe's AI assistant. where you can actually go in and summarize the deposition, and chat with the deposition, and do things like, you know, how did the witness perform? Score the witness's performance. DeSkribe.ai the witness's credibility. You know, what questions should the attorney have asked? Like, I've actually used it to grade the papers of some of my associates, so hopefully if they're listening, now they know. But, you know, like anything you would want to ask about a deposition, you can query the Skribe.ai AI assistant. And not only will it give you an answer, but the answer will be backed up by synced video clips from the deposition itself. So, you know, what used to take literally hours or days to create video clips for trial or for mediation or for reporting, you know, you can do in just seconds. I mean, you can go in and say, could you create video clips on every time the witness mentioned pre-existing back pain, and then it would just go through and create clips of each segment of that testimony. So it speeds up things. And for me, again, I'm all about making my job a little easier and maybe making me a little better at my job. And I think the software tools that we use, Scribe being one of them, has helped us do that.

Jack Sanker:
For those folks in our audience that aren't like litigators or whatever, I think it's important to help them understand how low tech and how like relatively unchanged the deposition process has been for, I don't know, what, a hundred years maybe? Like how long has like sternography been what it was? And I mean, in my career, I've seen absolutely next to no technological growth up until basically the pandemic when everyone was forced to do something different. And for those that don't know, stenographer, court reporter, a person who sits there with a little shorthand keyboard and types out what everyone says in real time. And that's the record of what people actually say. And it's so important because that's the record of what the witness is saying under oath. And at the end of the day, the court reporter's transcription of what's being said is what everyone has to rely on from the judge to a jury if they see that transcript and everything else. So it's incredibly important that it's accurate. But to Karl's point, I mean, It's also completely stripped of all context visually, body language and things like that. Now, of course, there are video depositions as well, but that is also like, I wish if the folks in the audience know what dealing with a traditional video deposition setup entails, it is such a pain in the butt, typically. And so that process is so low tech and so technology that's 20 years old. To hear you talk about kind of disrupting and innovating around it is a breath of fresh air.

Karl Seelbach:
Yeah, I mean, you made several points for me. I mean, I think if I'm kind of unwrapping that, I think what I would add to what you said is if you talk to someone who's either not a litigator or not an attorney, and you told them that in 2024, the way that we record testimony is we have someone type it on a funny looking keyboard where they're taking phonetic notes. of what was said, and then we're going to rely on the accuracy and the skill of that person to be the official record. I think most people will say, what are you talking about? Why don't you just video this? I mean, you can always tranSkribe.ai it later. And I think attorneys have just become conditioned to accepting it because it's the way it's always been without really thinking through the benefits of doing it a different way. And I think that COVID actually opened the door to a lot of us to think about how we can modernize our practice. So, you know, had COVID never happened, honestly, Scribe probably wouldn't even exist. But I think what Scribe really, and the founders, Tom and myself, We believe that the future of testimony is software and that, yes, there is a human component to certifying the process, verifying that the audio and video is true and correct. Nobody's tampered with that. And if it's professionally proofread, having a thorough, vettable process through which that transcript is proofread. But ultimately, the quality of the software is increasing at such a high pace, we are going to reach a point where it does not need to be professionally proofread. where it's actually that accurate. And I think the legal testimony should embrace that change and just come out with new rules, honestly, that kind of set forth, OK, what are the requirements going to look like in that world? Because we have a couple of things happening in the market. One is attorneys are more willing to embrace tech. But two is we actually have a pretty big supply and demand problem. Young people are not going to stenography school at a pace that can keep up with how many litigated claims there are. So there's a gap already, and the gap is forecasted to get worse year over year over year. So we're going to have to solve this. And again, stenographers play a very important role in this, and we're not suggesting that they need to be replaced. But I think having options is a good thing, and where I think the market is probably headed is that the vast majority of depositions will be recorded the way Scribe does it, and you'll have stenographers handling jury trials. You'll have stenographers handling high stakes, high dollar, complex commercial litigation where they don't care what the court reporter costs because the attorneys are charging $1,000 an hour just to be there anyway. I think that there's definitely a role, particularly for in-person events as well. There's definitely a role for stenographers, but the rate at which software is improving, particularly with all the AI stuff that's come out in the last two years, it's going to change the way we practice law. every aspect of how we practice law. So stenography and the way that we capture a record is just one of many things that are about to change.

Jack Sanker:
One thing that I think is interesting, and you and I chatted back when we were setting this up, I think a couple of months ago at this point. But I think you've gone on record in other shows, and I think you're going on record with saying AI is not going to replace attorneys any time in the near future. You know, my take is I obviously agree with that or else I would be looking for a job. But I think that lawyers who don't adapt to and incorporate AI will be replaced by lawyers that do. I think that's the real threat over time. And I think that your approach here with Scribe is a useful way of incorporating technology like this into an everyday practice, streamlining things and actually making the job easier rather than what you hear in a lot of, I mean, I would call them like AI maximalists kind of that want to talk about, you know, we're going to eliminate attorneys or we're going to eliminate other professions, you know, pick your poison, Eric. I mean, radiologists is also one they always talk about getting rid of. and everything else. It seems like you have a much more useful and grounded perspective here of how folks can incorporate this technology into making their jobs easier versus, you know, seeing it as a threat.

Karl Seelbach:
Yeah, I mean, I think that it all depends on how you define replace. So I'm not going to walk back what I said on prior shows. I don't think it's going to replace attorneys in the sense that I'm not going to fire someone on my current team and replace them with an AI agent or bot, right? That is not going to happen. However, I do think that the number of attorneys and paralegals and legal professionals that are hired at any type of firm, but in particular litigation firms, that could be impacted by AI. I may not need to hire a new paralegal when I can have everyone on my team become more efficient and be able to handle more work faster using these AI software tools. I think that There's definitely a debate out there, you know, will certain types of attorneys be replaced with software? I do think it is possible that certain practice areas could be largely replaced with software and it could be, I honestly think transactional attorneys are more at risk than litigation attorneys, but I'm biased as a litigator. But I think because so much of that is, I'm not going to say form-based, because that oversimplifies what transactional attorneys do. But I think because so much of it is based on their historical data sets and their document sets from all the deals that they've done, and that AI can just consume all of that and draft a new set with an intelligent prompt, I think that that practice is at risk in many ways. Where I think you can look for how this could impact the practice of law is at the plaintiff's bar. The plaintiff's bar, particularly in the world of personal injury, because they don't bill by the hour, they are always looking for ways to be more efficient. They're also always looking for tools that can make them better, more impactful, increase the value of their claims and their demand packages and all those things. I have sat in on some podcasts and listened to some seminars by the plaintiffs' bar, and they are embracing this 100%. They are looking for ways to automate as many pieces of their practice as they possibly can. I think, to your original point, I don't think AI is going to, in the near term, replace people in the sense that they're not going to be laid off or fired because the firm has now embraced AI, I do think – and I'm still trying to wrap my head around this piece – it is going to impact the billable hour in some way. Does it just mean that we can do more with less and that the deposition summary that used to take three, four, five hours to draft now takes 15 minutes to generate a healthy version that you like and another 30 to 45 minutes to proof it and get it all, you know, looking good for the client and you're just billing less? Or are firms going to look at this as, you know what, we can now hedge the risk of offering a flat rate or a flat fee or staging a fee because we know that almost no matter what happens with maybe a few pressure release valves baked in, we can use software to do this more efficiently. And I don't know, I think about that a lot. I mean, again, we represent about 32, I think last time I looked, 32 institutional clients, grocery stores, retailers, hospitals, shipping logistics companies, and we defend them across the state of Texas on personal injury cases. Is there a certain amount of that work that could probably be systemized and apply AI against it and speed up things like the case evaluations and the discovery? Sure, there is. And I'm one of the people who would probably embrace finding tools to help me do that or maybe build some myself. But what does that mean? What does that mean for the budget on the case? What does that mean for how we're billing on the case? And I think we're still trying to figure that out. Last presentation I gave on AI, which was to an Austin Bar Association group of probably about 40 or 50 attorneys, a lot of labor and employment attorneys, but there were a lot of attorneys in the room that worked at big firms, some at medium, some solos. We asked them to raise their hand if they were using any form of AI in their practice. And I think out of the 40 to 50 people that were in the room, maybe three raised their hand. So I think that, you know, some of us who enjoy technology and or maybe techies are quick to embrace things that are going to take a little while to become more common in the market. And the thing that I'm trying to wrap my arms around, because I'm I'm piloting and beta testing other tools unrelated deSkribe.aid because I want to improve the way my firm does things. And I'm trying to decide which ones are worthy of being rolled out to all of my associates, all of my paralegals, all of my partners. And I also keep a fear in the back of my mind If I don't do something, if I don't roll out some solution, what's really going to prevent that paralegal or that associate from logging on to ChatGPT, the free consumer version, or Google Gemini, and dropping client confidential information into... That is a real risk that every law firm faces today. And I think the quicker that we can begin to develop policies, probably, Jack, like the one your firm has, and roll out solutions, I think the better we'll be. And so I'm looking at Personally, co-pilot through Office 365. I'm piloting that right now to see how well it works. I'm piloting the enterprise version of ChatGPT, which does have some client privacy protections built into it, doesn't train on your data. And then I've also, I have piloted CoCouncil, which is now owned by Thomson Reuters, Lexus AI, which is obviously a Lexus product. And I've been impressed with all of them. All the ones I just mentioned are contenders for being added to my firm's toolbox. There's a lot of companies out there selling AI products, so you definitely have to vet what you buy. dipping your toe in the water to at least try some things is probably a good idea. And, you know, that's why one of the tools that we built at Scribe, I'm so proud of the team for doing it, is that deposition analysis tool where you can upload a video deposition and chat with it and actually get synced video clips, get, you know, summaries, personalized summaries, like you want them, not pre-formatted 30-page, 50-page summary of a, you know, 200-page deposition, which to me is too much, but you can just get an executive summary or, hey, draft a summary to my client. The main topics I want you to cover are X, Y, Z, and the chatbot will generate a summary just like you want, and then you can take that and work with it, and it'll create those video clips. So use cases like that, You know, I use chat GPT a lot for summarizing lengthy documents. I also use Copilot for when I have a client call, I try to always either myself or the associate document the main takeaways from the call. So like one of us or sometimes both of us are taking notes. But what's so nice is you can drop those notes into Copilot and just say, hey, draft a client email recapping our call. Here are my notes from the call. And it will take them and just do an awesome email recap that just makes you look really good and organized and professional.

Jack Sanker:
Yeah, I think something that I do spend a lot of time thinking about is, and you mentioned this, is the effect on the business model, the billable hour, and how that's going to work on both sides of things. I think you're exactly right. The plaintiff's bar, and I used to be a plaintiff's attorney for years before coming over, doing mostly defense work now. But plaintiff's part is typically innovating a lot more because the model, for those that don't know, for most plaintiff's firms is a contingency fee, which means they take a percentage of whatever it is they get via settlement or verdict. So the less time, broadly speaking, the less time they spend getting to that settlement or verdict, the bigger their margin is, right? So they have all the incentives in the world to innovate. Not that defense firms don't, but it is different. They have all the incentives in the world to innovate.

Karl Seelbach:
They also have skin in the game. In other words, not only do they have incentive to be efficient, but when they are paying the case expenses, whether it's deposition expenses or experts or whatever, they are literally paying it out of their own pocket or their firm's pocket in the hopes that they win or settle the case. And if they don't, then they have to write that off as a loss. I think that changes the dynamic. And I actually forgot that you had done PlanetSource. So you certainly know firsthand what that world looks like. And so I do think that they're so quick to embrace efficiencies. And I often wish the defense bar had the same attitude.

Jack Sanker:
Yeah, it's institutional. I mean, it's a lot of times you're dealing with clients that are really, you know, these are big companies that have a lot of policies and everything else. And then also, it's kind of explaining to them, hey, we're going to ask you to effectively eat the cost of this. this thing while we try it out, see if it works. And they're like, No, thank you. We don't want to do that. But what's what's interesting is, I mean, like, let's, let's assume everyone on both sides of this process starts. And this is I'm sorry, this is maybe off the rails a bit. But it's like, one thing I did want to ask you about.

Karl Seelbach:
Now, let's go off the rails.

Jack Sanker:
It's always fun when we do that. Yeah, I mean, it's AI, we could it's science fiction, you know, we could do that. But I think You know, if you make litigation, especially like the document management aspect of it, especially the people ask me, what is litigation and non lawyers? And a lot of times I'll answer them and I'll say it's the art of mailing things back and forth until someone pays. So. When that process of mailing things back and forth becomes automated and easy and cheap and so cheap that because you don't need five lawyers on a case, you need one lawyer and two paralegals or whatever, and maybe this is 20 years down the road or anything like that, isn't the volume of junk litigation just going to go through the roof? And by junk litigation, I mean slap suits, I mean just really baseless claims, frivolous stuff, whatever. Isn't that going to just go up?

Karl Seelbach:
I think it will absolutely go up. But I think that the counterpoint to that, or the way that hopefully the system will fight that, is it will be easier and more efficient to respond to those – we'll call them BS or frivolous or mostly groundless lawsuits, because it will become so… cheap really to file a lawsuit of substance, like a decently put together lawsuit, that I think we'll see a substantial increase in litigation. And quite frankly, there's already – is the company's name Do Not Pay? So with companies like that one, I'm sure they love the shout out, by the way. We covered them on the show before. And there's others out there, too. They're not the only one. The tools with generative AI are getting so powerful that you really could put together a very decent petition and probably a pretty decent set of discovery requests per se. with the help of software, whereas before, you know, I probably couldn't find in the hundreds of cases I've handled, or I don't know, a thousand plus maybe, I probably couldn't find one pro se petition that was worth a darn. Not that we handle many cases involving pro se claimants, but yeah, I think the volume is likely to go up. I don't know. I would say the scenario you just deSkribe.aid is probably a lot closer than 20 years out. I bet it's five years out where the where it's really hard to justify to a client staffing five attorneys on a case when one or two that know what they're doing with the right software could easily do it. And I think you're likely to see this, at least from my vantage point, keeping in mind the type of litigation I've done, I think you're likely to see this first on the plaintiff's side, which we're seeing today. It was not going to take long for the insurance carriers and companies to start mandating it. So I think we'll begin to see it at some point from insurance companies that are hiring outside counsel. We will. And then the next trickle down or up, depending on which way you look at it. we'll see in the outside counsel guidelines. So even if you're not working with a carrier, if you have a client that has outside counsel guidelines, we're gonna begin to see something related to using AI to make the litigation more efficient and less expensive in the outside counsel guidelines. And it wouldn't shock me if a savvy AI company, and maybe I should lean on my team at Scribe to do this, honestly starts to go to these companies and say, hey, we can help you dramatically reduce your spend on whatever it is, depositions, your outside counsel. Here's how we can do it. Let's pilot it with one of your firms, you know, and whether we like it or not, at some point, I think we'll have no choice but to use it.

Jack Sanker:
And what you mean by guidelines and things like that, again, for folks in the audience that don't exactly know how this works, what we're talking about is like billing guidelines. So a carrier, an insurance carrier who may send to a law firm, I don't know, 50 lawsuits per year to defend, it's a huge chunk of money coming in. You typically get to bill a certain amount of time to do whatever it is you want to do on the case. If you want to draft an answer to a complaint, or you want to draft affirmative defenses, all of those things. I mean, you track how much time it literally takes you to do those things, and then you send the client a bill for that amount of time, times whatever your hourly rate is. Karl's talking about here, which I 100% agree with, is you're going to see insurance companies say, hey, we will not pay more than one hour to answer a complaint, which might take before three hours or five hours, depending on the complexity and the length of it. They may just say, listen, you have access to this relatively cheap and reliable software that you should be using by now. And if you're not, you're not really the firm that we should be working with. So we're only gonna pay you an hour to do this versus if you bill us for five hours, we're gonna cut it down to one hour. And so the firms will just have to adapt based on that.

Karl Seelbach:
Or the firms will go to prospective clients or their current clients and say, hey, we're always looking for a way to be good stewards of your money. We wanna do good work by you so that we keep getting more business, right? And here's a new way that we've rolled out to do whatever it may be, drafting discovery factors, summarizing documents, taking depositions, whatever it may be. And then that becomes one more reason that that client wants to hire your firm because you have their best interest at heart and you're being a good steward of their money. One of the plaintiff's lawyers that his firm is using Scribe, and I was talking to him about the motivations. Like, why do they like it? And it was really interesting. He had a really interesting perspective. He said there's two reasons that they really like the tool for taking depots. He said, one, it's so fast. You know, you can take a deposition in the morning and over lunch, you can review it and create video clips and summarize it and all those things. In fact, That attorney took a deposition in the morning, created video clips over the lunch break, and in the next witness's deposition in the afternoon, used the video clips as exhibits and played those video clips during that next deposition, which was really cool. The reason I brought that attorney up, though, is the second point that he made. He said, look, we have an ethical obligation to our clients to be good stewards of their money, which means for us finding the most cost effective tools and vendors and resources that we can use in the case, as long as we get the same or better quality out of that resource, if one thing is 50% less expensive or 25% or 70, whatever it is, for a plaintiff's personal injury lawyer in particular, that is money that would otherwise go directly into their client's pocket at the end of the case. And so for that attorney, he felt kind of an ethical obligation. From the defense standpoint, from my standpoint, I'll go back to like when I first started practicing law, I was kind of drawn to the way that my law partner, Trek, thinks about handling cases. And it was refreshing because I had heard some comments from another attorney, who I shall not name, that were not in the same mindset as Trek. Trek's mindset was, I'm going to resolve this case for the client, whatever the most efficient way to get from A to B is. Right. And you know what? Even if that means I settle the case in the first 30 days, that client's going to remember that I had their best interest at heart. They're going to send me more work. Whereas this other attorney. I remember the response was like, what do you mean you settled the case in a month? Why wouldn't you just draw it out longer and bill a little bit to the file? He wasn't suggesting pad the file, but he was suggesting work the file instead of being in a rush to get the case resolved. And I thought Trek was just so genuine and so had such integrity to say, no, I'm going to do what's best for the client, even if that means I'm not going to be able to bill any more to this file. And I think the same thing is true when we talk about embracing technology. You know, you all mentioned generative AI in particular. I don't think we can forget that, right? Just because the billables are going to go down potentially significantly doesn't mean that we shouldn't use it if it's in the client's best interest.

Jack Sanker:
Well, I think we'll have to. And yeah, I think we've all also had that conversation and we've all, you know, maybe met that lawyer who wants to say, well, what do you mean you're going to settle this case so early or whatever? And none of those lawyers work at our firm, by the way. Once you get to a certain level of being established, and I'm sure that we've all had this conversation with their clients where you're like, hey, Here's what's going to happen. I can tell you the next five things are going to happen on this case. And ultimately, we're going to end up in a scenario where they're going to settle it for X amount of dollars or not. So the sooner you want to do that, the better. In the meantime, you pay me by the hour. If you want to drag this out or you want to pursue a not frivolous, but you want to pursue a counterclaim or you want to do something that ultimately I'll tell you, I don't think it's going to get you what you want. If you want to do that, go right ahead. Like you said, you're paying me for my time. But, you know, so it's not just the firm that's making that determination and has that interest at heart. It's going to be the client as well. And they're going to have, yeah.

Karl Seelbach:
A hundred percent agree. I mean, I have one that comes to mind that I'm defending right now. We just got a six to seven million dollar demand. And I have explained to the client that I think it's in their best interest to go ahead and mediate this case. The sooner, the better. And for whatever reason, the client's directive is, we're not ready yet. And so I'm about to pull off that Band-Aid in this case, and it is going to result in a lot more depositions, which again, I mean, I can bill for that. That's fine. I'm happy to take and defend those depositions that are likely to be coming. But at the end of the day, I also know everything about this file that I need to know to be able to value the case for settlement. Nothing in those depositions is likely to change that. And so, you know, Yeah, I think attorneys like the two of you and me as well, you know, we know that as long as we're doing good work for clients, there's going to be more work in the future. And so, you know, let's just, as most of my clients say, a closed file is a happy file. And so, you know, how can I get the client a result that ultimately they are happy with? And most of the time, and I think the statistics bear this out across almost all practice areas, most of the time that means a settlement. I mean, most of the time now, we certainly have some that we take to the mat. We just had an employment discrimination case that we just got the arbitration ruling yesterday and we won on all counts. The impacts. I'm completely dismissed. And we've had some summary – I think three or four in the summary judgments in the last, I don't know, four or five months where we felt strongly enough about the case that we went ahead and fully litigated summary judgment motions, which were granted. So we're definitely willing to go to the mat when it makes sense. But often, particularly for what I do, once you've valued a case, and you kind of know what your potential exposure is, and you know the risk of going forward versus the certainty that you get with the settlement, as long as the other side's being reasonable, at some point, they never start out reasonable, but that view's probably reciprocated the other direction. They probably think, we're not being reasonable. But at some point, through a mediation process, If you can kind of overlap, right. And, you know, you may pay just a little more than you want and the other side takes less than they wanted. Most of these cases tend to settle, but at least for the world I live in.

Danessa Watkins:
Now, looking forward, obviously, you have a great product that I'm sure you're continuing to develop. But have you thought at all about other ways that you may want to streamline, you know, the litigation process through technology outside of just depositions? Is that on your radar at all right now?

Karl Seelbach:
It absolutely is on the radar. Like, my wheels are constantly turning of, you know, how can we improve litigation and the practice of law and make my life easier and make my clients happier? We're pretty laser focused at Scribe on legal testimony. And I think, you know, what you'll see from Scribe in the next. six months, year, you know, probably two years, is going to be almost exclusively focused on capturing, analyzing, sharing legal testimony. Now, the current primary focus is depositions, although we have had examinations under oath taken through Scribe. We've had recorded statements taken through Scribe. You know, we'll probably at some point have some partnerships with courts that can do their Zoom hearings through Scribe. So, we're constantly looking at ways to branch out beyond depositions, but I think there's just so much of litigation actually does take place in depositions, like that tends to be where the rubber meets the road. And so, one of the goals of Scribe isn't just to kind of improve the process, but it's also to make it so simple and easy to take a deposition that attorneys like the three of us can just quickly say, you know what? Let's just take the depositions. Like, let's not wait. We don't need to wait six months. We don't need to wait a year. Let's just get the people who are supposed to know, you know, the key facts in this case. Let's get them sworn in and let's let's take their deposition. And if we can make it really easy to do that by helping the attorney get ready for the deposition. You know, that's certainly something on our road map by making it very inexpensive to schedule and do the deposition and then also improving the post deposition experience everything from how fast you get it to how easy it is to analyze it. To making it, you know, super, super simple for you to spot inconsistencies between what the witness said and what other witnesses said, or maybe what the witness said and what the documents in the case say. So those are where a lot of the things that we're currently focusing on. problems we're currently focused on solving, that's where they are today. Now, you know, for me, honestly, one of the things that drives me insane, and I don't know, maybe your firm is immune to this, you know, I have clients now who are using legal vendors to process our invoices. And in that process continues to get more mind numbingly frustrating. Oh, man, yeah. You know what I'm talking about.

Danessa Watkins:
The automatic words that gets you, you know, deducted every time.

Karl Seelbach:
And yeah. Yeah. So, so for your listeners who may not be familiar, you know, for a lot of us that build by the hour, we are submitting our invoices on a monthly basis electronically. And what's happened over the last 10 to 15 years are these vendors have gotten hold of these larger companies, whether it's the company or an insurance company or whatever. They've gotten a hold of them, and they said, hey, why don't you have your law firm submit your invoices through our online portal? And what we'll do is we'll scrutinize the heck out of them, and we will save you X percent because we're going to deduct those invoices. And so, honestly, right now, selfishly, I'm thinking of ways to potentially try to – should I bring a product to market that fights that, that basically helps attorneys craft time entries in a way that track outside counsel billing guidelines and then appeal, using generative AI, appeal the write-downs? But again, you said at the beginning, the three bullets. I don't know if I can add another bullet to my… my list right now, but if someone else has created that tool and they are listening, just email me. Maybe my firm will be happy to sign up.

Jack Sanker:
I'm very interested in that because I have the sneaking suspicion that more and more of that review process has already been automated by the insurers, by their own either proprietary or contracted out AI that's doing it. And so I would love it if we can get to a scenario where like our AI and their AI are just talking back and forth forever and we can, and then eventually they just, they pay the bill.

Karl Seelbach:
Yeah. Yeah. That's, it's crazy that we even do that to ourselves as a profession, but, but we do. So, yeah. So, you know, other than that, I mean, some wild ideas that I've had, I don't know if they'll ultimately go anywhere or not, but I am kind of curious to see if VR and AR, virtual reality and augmented reality, end up taking any significant presence within the legal industry. And I'll frame it this way. If you had told me in 2019, 2018, that we would be taking the majority of our depositions over Zoom or something like Zoom, I probably would have told you, I don't think so. And there probably would have been attorneys who said, I'm never going to do a court hearing over Zoom or a deposition over Zoom. I think the market shifted pretty quickly and really never looked back. The vast majority now happen online. I have to wonder, as Apple, Meta, and Google refine their offerings in the VR and AR space and make them better, lower price, more comfortable to wear, Will that potentially someday become something that we use for client meetings, for court hearings, for depositions? I think it is possible. I think it is possible. A lot will depend on how quickly the consumer market begins to embrace it. You don't want to be the crazy person in the office that's wearing a headset. What's wrong with that guy? Oh, he's taking depositions. But I don't know. looked at iPhones funny when they first came out and wondered, you know, where's the keyboard? Why are you playing with that toy? So I think that things change. And, you know, yeah. Even I remember, you know, when we first started electronic filing and before we'd been sending paper, you know, we had runners going to the courthouse to file the pleadings that needed to be filed. And my first secretary, who was probably, In her mid-60s, and I was a law student, just fresh out of law school, I was probably 22, and I remember telling her I wanted my file on a case digitized, and she looked at me like I was an alien. She said, Now, Karl, why would you want to do that? Because if you need something from the file, you just ask me and I'll walk over there and I'll get it for you and I'll bring it to you. And the compromise we reach, because I needed to reach a compromise and not be the 22-year-old new associate, you know, trying to tell everybody how to do their jobs. The compromise was, okay, next new case we get, brand new one, let's digitize that one because I think you're going to really love how convenient it is to have everything kind of at your fingertips. And ultimately, you know, she came around and realized that I wasn't crazy and that this made a lot of sense. You know, I think that we'll see a lot of change in the next five years. And I think the story is still to be written as to how I think the plaintiff's bar is writing their own story right now. They are embracing AI, you know, extremely fast. I think the story is to be written as to how larger firms and firms that build by the hour are going to embrace generative AI. And I'm really curious to kind of just Have a seat at the table and try to figure out where this AI is going to take us as an industry. There's a lot of interesting ways it could go. I guess I'm halfway through my practice. I don't know. I love what I do, and I could easily work for another 20 or 30 years. Thinking about, what does the future look like for law firm owners? What does the future look like for equity partners? their own books of business, who have a lot of people working on those books of business that bill by the hour, when we are having a conversation right here talking about how software could automate a lot of that and significantly reduce the amount of billable hours that are being logged. And I think that probably raises an eyebrow with a lot of business owners and a lot of equity partners. What do you mean we're going to roll out software that significantly reduces the amount of time that my teams are going to work on things? I don't have the answer to that. I'm curious, too, as we begin to implement some of the AI tools that we talked about at my firm. Maybe testing some flat fee arrangements with full disclosure that we are using software to try to streamline and automate some of the things maybe on lower exposure cases, I could see it. That would be a good first. dip the toe in the water approach of, hey, this case looks like it's maybe maybe I'll give you an example. You know, we have cases come in every once in a while where they stipulated that the damages are under seventy five thousand because they don't want to get removed to federal court. Gosh, that'd be a great one. Right. That'd be a great one to use. AI to the max. Let's see how much we can streamline, how much lower stakes you mean, like relatively lower.

Jack Sanker:
Not that seventy five grand is not a lot of money, but it's not five million.

Karl Seelbach:
Exactly. And again, just for your listeners sake, I'm not suggesting seventy five thousand isn't a lot of money, but you rarely see a plaintiff personal injury case nowadays where it's less than seventy five thousand dollars being alleged as the damage. Almost every petition we get. alleges over a million dollars in controversy. And quite frankly, most of the settlement demands that we get now on car wreck cases, on workplace injury cases, I would say the average is multi six figures. And I'm seeing more and more and more where the settlement demand is in excess of a million or two million. So, you know, I don't know exactly what happened at post-COVID or the Trump era or what has changed, but certainly the demands are larger. And, you know, according to some presenters that I've listened to and sat in on, you know, we're seeing more and more nuclear verdicts as well, which is probably a topic for a whole different podcast episode. But, yeah, but I think, you know, it's important. Maybe we'll bring you back for that one. It's important. It's important to mention briefly, because I do think that as Judges and juries seem to be awarding more. And in fact, I know a plaintiff's lawyer here in Austin who just posted on LinkedIn yesterday or the day before yesterday, that he's seen more seven figure verdicts in the last six months than he had seen in the last decade. Oh my God, yeah. I'm out of Austin, Texas, Travis County. And we were going back and forth on, well, what's the reason for that? And is he worried about tort reform? Because the system as a whole can only take so much in these excessive verdicts before it has an impact on the goods that you and I buy every single day. I mean, at some point, someone has to pay for it. So again, that's a big public policy discussion. Probably not. We don't want to get into that now.

Jack Sanker:
We should eventually though. That's I mean, I'm, I'm with Yeah, I think we can all talk about that kind of stuff.

Karl Seelbach:
And I have a lot of friends that are plaintiff's lawyers. And I do, you know, I guess maybe we'll end it on this. I kind of view my role in the type of work that we do, which is primarily personal injury defense is kind of a check and balance on the system. Right. Plaintiffs' lawyers serve a very important purpose, and I do truly believe that the vast majority of them are doing it for the right reason. They care about public safety, and their hope is by bringing these lawsuits, not only will they help their clients recover, but they'll also ultimately make the world a safer place. But, you know, if it weren't for defense lawyers, you know, what would we be looking at? Every case is a million plus dollar case and no insurance available. Yeah, there'd be no insurance available. So there's a balance to the system. And I always tell my team, you know. we're not a win-at-all-cost mentality. We really wanna do what's right and what's fair. And so the faster we can figure out the truth of what happened, who caused it, and what is a reasonable and fair outcome, the better. And that's the way we approach 99% of our cases, is trying to figure out what's the truth of what happened and what's a fair outcome in this case.

Jack Sanker:
Yeah, appreciate you making the time for this. This was great. If something else comes up down the road, we'd love to have you back too.

Karl Seelbach:
Yeah, I mean, look, I love this kind of stuff. I really, I probably don't have the appetite for more development or more companies right now. But I really do think about Gosh, what is the future of personal injury defense in a world where generative AI becomes really damn good and doesn't hallucinate? Just think about like evaluating a case. You know, when I get in 30, 50, 100 documents and I ask the team to draft a summary and recommendations, you know, what happens when I can drop that in a software program and it does it for them? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I think I think we're going to have to all figure that out over the next five years.

Jack Sanker:
You know, I think I always I had had a discussion with friends and the tech people that, you know, like tend to believe that everything's going to be automated or whatever. I will say this trial attorneys, the only job that's in the Constitution. So we we will be the last to be automated. You know, parts of our job will be automated, but we'll always be here. We're the only job that is, you know, constitutionally mandated to exist.

Karl Seelbach:
I don't disagree. You know, until they license robots to go argue cases in court, I think we are safe, particularly the attorneys who are experienced and knowledgeable and are good at prompt engineering software. Yeah. So to the listeners of your podcast, if any of you are interested in trying Scribe, maybe uploading a video deposition, doing some of the things that we talked about, summarizing it, creating video clips, chatting with it, feel free to drop me an email, Karl at Scribe.ai. That's Karl with a K and Scribe with a K. And I'll give you 25% off your first upload so you can kick the tires and see what it's like.

Danessa Watkins:
Amazing. Thank you.

Jack Sanker:
Thank you, Karl.

Danessa Watkins:
All right, that's our show. Thanks again to Karl Saalbach for coming on and updating us on what's available to us as litigators and what's coming down the pipeline as far as technology and how it will intersect with the law. Be sure to check out his website and his product. We will include his email and all the information on where to find Scribe in our description. Remember, we come out with shows every two weeks, so please subSkribe.ai, like, follow us wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next time.