The Legal Data Intelligence Podcast with David Cowen (Episode 13)

David Cowen’s podcast, Careers and the Business of Law: The Legal Data Intelligence Series, has featured prominent industry leaders offering their unique perspectives on the future of legal, and the myriad ways in which Legal Data Intelligence (LDI) can enable legal professionals to take on unprecedented data challenges at a time when organizations are scrambling to take control of their data.

In this episode, Daniel Gold talks about the evolution of the legal industry as the volume of data, along with the variety of data sources, has exploded. Gold offers insights on how legal professionals should leverage burgeoning technologies and new workflows to proactively extract value from data. He delves into how new skills, such as prompt engineering and the ability to effectively query central databases, are becoming increasingly relevant as AI adoption ramps up across law firms and in-house legal departments.

Listen to the full episode and read a partial transcript below.

David Cowen: I recently heard Connie Brent and Jeff Franke talk about how practicing law used to be about guarding—and now it's about guiding. I agree; we've gone from being very reactive in the legal space to proactive and strategic and tactical. It's a much more complex perspective, and a fascinating place to be for a more diverse group of backgrounds to enter into the space. Is that what you're seeing at BDO?

Daniel Gold: Yes, I am. That's a really interesting point that you bring up. I'm seeing that there is this convergence right now—or, let's say, a breaking down of silos between litigation data, breach response data, privacy, legal operations. You've got all this data, right? And the data is all diversified and spread out everywhere. Ultimately, at the end of the day, what are we doing with it? We are coming up with processes and policies to defend and protect that data. And should something happen, we're responding to a breach of that data. And then we are also trying to make sure we're running all that data as a business, which means there may be a regulatory compliance issue, investigation, or litigation that results. As we try to protect the data, search the data, interrogate that data, figure out which custodians own what data and which devices—are they making data on certain apps and if so, what are they creating that data on—what we're seeing is this convergence. It allows professionals to better work together across multiple disciplines and expertise areas and practice areas to be able to do one thing really, really well.

What is the exact problem that we're trying to solve for here? When you look at it by breaking down the silos, and you look at this convergence, you see that it's more of an enterprise data play than anything else, and that to me feels much different than 20 years ago.

You're absolutely right. That's not what we did 20 years ago; then, we were solving for a very specific X. This is three-dimensional. The good news is, if you're a bit of a legalist and a technologist and a project manager, and you've got any kind of political savvy and financial savvy? This is such a great place to be. But what I love about our industry is the character, the integrity, and the radical curiosity in most of the professionals we work with every day.

Don't forget resilience—there's a lot of that needed as well. Because it is all now changing at a faster pace than we have ever seen. That is helping us drive career opportunities. That's helping us drive what the business of law looks like. I think that's helping us come up with better processes and optimization. There are a lot of things that are really going well, and one of the things that we must do really well is to make sure that the industry is not operating in an echo chamber. That it's being opened up to everybody, for all diverse opinions to be welcomed, so all those opinions can help effectuate some sort of difference—because we need everybody's opinions right now.

To that point, let's talk about careers for a minute. What are some of the new titles you're seeing in the space? What are you hiring for?

BDO as a whole has many different areas, but specific to what you and I are talking about, we are looking at folks who really understand and know AI because it is so hotly in demand. We're seeing law firms keenly interested in how to use generative AI to drive value creation, as well as to create change. And in the corporate legal departments, same idea: they’re looking to find value creation to run legal as a business. So we need folks who understand AI, and folks who understand different data types because we're seeing so many. Having an understanding of disparate data that is uncommon, and how to somehow bring that into a central repository for review, is big.

There’s also very high demand, not necessarily here at BDO but in general, for folks who understand prompt engineering. For a generative AI tool to work correctly, you need to be able to ask it the right questions.

As I've been interviewing some folks on my own podcast, I’ve found it so interesting how attorneys and other legal professionals alike have all said to me that being able to customize and craft the right prompt and ask generative AI the right question in order to evoke an appropriate response has helped them have better human conversations as well. It's fascinating that the better we get at asking great questions of generative AI, the better we get at asking human beings questions as well, and I think there may be a side benefit to that as well.