AI Does 35% of the Work. The Attorney Owes the Other 65%.

Collin McKee

Welcome back to the Endeavors AI Podcast. I'm your host, Collin McKee, founder of Endeavors AI, where we talk about the intersection of artificial intelligence, law, business, and the new economy being built all around it. My guests today are Kent Grover and Robert Young IV, founders of Elite Legal Strategy, an outside general counsel firm in Century City, California. Both of them came up in big law litigation, defending Fortune 500 companies. Robert also tried cases as a state prosecutor in California. Then they walked away from all of it and built a firm around a different idea. Membership for business clients. No billing for the small stuff and AI doing the work most firms still hire junior associates to do. So if you run a firm and want to know what building around AI properly looks like, without cutting corners on malpractice risk, this conversation is for you. Kent, Robert, welcome to the show.

Kent Grover

Thank you, good to be here Collin.

Robert Young IV

Yes, thanks for having us, Collin. Really appreciate it.

Collin McKee

So first time we've had two guests on at the same time, and I'm really excited about it. I'll try to direct it so we're not talking over each other. Kent, let's start with you. Short version, what were you doing in big law and what did a normal week look like for you?

Kent Grover

Yeah, thanks so much for the question Collin and it's good to be here. My name again is Kent Grover. So I've been practicing about 10 years, working about five, six big law firms, all the way up to one of the biggest in the country as the last one was an Am Law 60 firm. I did catastrophic injury cases, a lot of commercial litigation, business litigation, product liability litigation, toxic tort litigation so kind of all over the place. From the litigation perspective, we'll get into this a little bit later but Elite Legal Strategy when we started it, we've now kind of zoomed out and we focus on helping businesses from a general counsel perspective, but I would say a day in the life of a big law associate is pretty much starting at seven or eight in the morning and finishing around seven or eight at night. You work with multiple partners throughout the day and throughout your tenure at these big law firms. And it's grueling. But I will say it's an older way of practicing law, right? It's the same type of thing enter your time as you're going through what we used to do it's it will basically you build in a six minute increment. So that's kind of like just what's ingrained in you, right? So you work hard. We did a lot of trial work at all these firms and just a lot of billing and stuff like that.

Collin McKee

Awesome. Appreciate the correction, Mr. Grover. So Robert, you took a different road in. You tried cases as a prosecutor and on the civil defense side. So what's the short version of your

Robert Young IV

Yes. Correct. Yeah, so in law school I was on the Byrne trial advocacy team, right? So I kind of cut my teeth there. We did dozens and dozens of trials there as if we were real attorneys, right? This is before we're barred, before we become attorneys. Fell in love with it, and then I actually started out at a civil firm. And then at my first civil firm, I was doing all of the work up and then I would hand the motion or hand the brief off to my superior, and then he or she would go and argue it, right? And then I was, I felt like I was kind of not getting the most out of the skills that I had developed from Byrne. So I actually left that first civil firm and then went to the city attorney's office out here in LA. There they throw you off in the deep end, right? I had my first trial within my first week and a half of being there, and we did everything from domestic violence crimes to sex crimes to drug possession, things of that nature. Did that for a few years, got dozens of trials under my belt, and then leveraged that into a civil defense career. Like Kent, I did a couple of big law firms and was able to leverage my criminal background into a civil career. So there I did some catastrophic injury as well, some toxic tort as well. We would literally fly all around the country trying different types of cases. Even after I got married, maybe 10 days later, I was in trial through Christmas and New Year, right? That was just my life for years and years until a couple years ago, Kent and I started our own thing.

Collin McKee

Wow, yeah, it's quite a storied tale. So yeah, great a lot of great experience there too. So Kent to you. So almost no one leaves that caliber of litigation to go outside, right? It's pretty much the promised land of law practice. So why did you?

Kent Grover

Yeah, great question. So what I'll say is when I was a litigator and trial attorney and to Rob's point it was a lot of travel really went all over the country that litigators kind of have their kind of stuck in the mud way of doing things, right? So it's a constant fight. Everyone wants to fight. We have something called discovery and civil litigation. And if you miss that deadline of what's it called providing information, most litigators just tend to jump to getting court intervention. And my style and I know Rob's style is the same. I'm a pick up the phone type of guy, right? Pick up the phone, try to resolve the issue, very practical. And for me, I found I was the most effective. And what I really enjoyed was doing that talking to people on a daily basis, trying to get to the bottom of issues and resolving them. That even translates into settling cases, right? I was kind of known as the dismissal king and the settling king in all my firms because I would get a lot of my clients out of lawsuits and then resolve them pretty quickly. So you can kind of translate that into business, right? Business dealings, negotiating, representing business interests versus just constantly being adversarial, right? And so for me, it was a very easy transition. Now I use all those litigation skills that I gained over 10 years to protect businesses and what they do on a daily basis. So it's kind of approaching it from a business practical perspective and weighing that with the litigation legal perspective. And that's kind of how and why I moved away from day to day litigation towards more business

Collin McKee

Okay. So no particular catalyst moment. It was just you knew that's where you wanted to go.

Kent Grover

I would say it was a culmination, right? I think that the trial traveling got a little bit hard, not hard, just you keep doing it again and again. And for me, like I said, I wouldn't say there was one catalyst moment, but I realized over time what I enjoy. And that's getting down to it, resolving issues, resolving cases. And so at a certain point, it was like, you know what, that's what we need to do and kind of move away from the old kind of way of doing law.

Collin McKee

Okay. And Robert, I didn't ask the question. I'm assuming that Kent brought it to Robert, but maybe it was vice versa. When this came, when you guys first started talking about this, what was your reaction? Because you were both, at the time, in great positions where why give that up? So what was your reaction when he brought

Robert Young IV

Yeah. Yeah, so going back, so I actually met Kent my first year of law school. So throughout our careers, we've been each other's sounding boards. So for most of our career, we were actually at separate law firms. So I would encounter an issue or figure needed some help with strategy, call Kent. Kent would encounter an issue, need help with strategy, he would call me. So we've been in constant communication since we met back in 2014, right? And then we ended up at the same firm. So Kent's last big law firm was also my last big law firm. So we would go to lunch and we would talk, and just as regular employees do, right? Maybe you have certain gripes, or man, I wish things were this way, I wish things were that way. And it's just something that we kind of came to together because we had talked about opening our own firm for a while, but it's really when you get that kind of sophisticated, very high-level workflow that you kind of learn one the throes of litigation, the thrills of being an attorney, but really you learn, you know what, we can probably do this too, right? And so when we both kinda came to that decision, about how we can do something like this but do it in our own way, do something different. That's when it was like, okay, you know what, this is something that we can do. Let's jump, let's go out on a ledge, let's do this together. I trust you, you trust me, let's do it. But like you said, Collin, a lot of people, the big law is the holy grail for a lot of people, right? So it's not something that's easy to give up. It's not something that's easy to turn away from. But when you believe in yourself, believe in your partner, believe in what you can do for the business. Shoot for the sky, right?

Kent Grover

Yeah, and Collin, if I can just jump in and add something. So Rob and I have always been entrepreneurial from day one. And I think part of kind of why we start our own thing is you kind of get tired of working for somebody else, right? Like if I want to work this hard, I want to work this hard for myself. And frankly, we work harder now probably, right? Because running a business is not for the faint hearted, right? But at the end of the day, it's worth it for us, right? Because we're doing our own thing, we're building something from scratch. A lot of people, they're comfortable getting the paycheck and just keep doing that. It's just never been our thing. In fact, when I was in my about third or fourth year of practice, I went and got my MBA at the same time. So I was not only practicing law, I was also back in school, also at that time one of the hardest things I had ever done, right? Now that seems easy. But, we kind of started feeling like we're way more business oriented. Rob and I had even started other businesses and then kind of put those on pause. But when we started ELS, it just clicked, right? Everything clicked and we've just day by day getting way busier, getting more clients, and it's just reinforcing our decision as to why we decided to move and start our own thing.

Robert Young IV

Yeah. Collin, can I piggyback on that or did you have another question? Okay, really quickly, something that kept coming up in my civil experience was no matter how big or how small the firm was or whatever prestige the firm had, we were talking to the client at a specific part of the problem, right? On the timeline of a problem, we were closer to the end, right? Something that came to mind for me and something that I was constantly fighting up against, with my superiors or the firm or just the traditional practice of law and set in litigation was I want to talk to the client sooner. I'm gonna be the client's first call as they're making the decision, right? Usually when we got involved on the litigation level for civil litigation, it was once the problem had already materialized and it was either too late and now we're doing the best we can with what we have, or it was so far into it that it was expensive to try and fix it or undo it, right? And so our experience really informed our business plan, right? These are some of the things that we're seeing in our experience. We can do something different to try and alleviate those and bring a new spin to this very old traditional practice, which we call law.

Collin McKee

Cool. Perfect timing. So my next question, I'll make it a jump ball, whoever wants to take it. Outside general counsel, it's not an everyday thing. So for a firm owner that's not familiar, what does that actually mean day by day?

Robert Young IV

Okay. Yeah. Okay. So most companies have in-house general counsel. In-house general counsel, well, let me go back. Most companies above a certain annual recurring revenue have in-house general counsel. In-house general counsel is usually one of the employees, right? So before a new product is launched, a new service is offered, they talk to legal first. Legal is one of the employees. They pretty much check the box, right? But a lot of companies don't necessarily need a forty plus hour in-house general counsel that's a full-time employee, right? A lot of companies of a certain size have ongoing needs, weekly needs, right? But in-house general counsel is one way to attack that. Outside general counsel is pick up the phone as you're making the decision. We're not gonna hit you over the head with billing. You don't have to pay us as an employee, but as you need us, pick up the phone, call us, we're 100% there for you, right? So otherwise, if companies don't have in-house general counsel, they usually just hire attorneys once the problem happens. And again. Usually the problem has materialized. They're so far in the process that now we have to undo, redo. It gets really expensive in time and money. So in-house general counsel and outside counsel, who they just call spur of the moment, are two ways to solve it. Outside general counsel kind of balances the two. So that's why we wanted to do that. Correct.

Kent Grover

Yeah, Collin, we live in a fractional world now, from a professional standpoint, right? You're seeing fractional CFOs come up, fractional CMOs come up, fractional CLOs, Chief Legal Officers come up, right? We live in the world of subscription, of on demand, right? And so firms that are not kind of catching up with that trend, well, in our opinion, we'll kind of get left behind. And I know we might get into AI a little bit later, right? But that is kind of like the trend, right? And so it's not like you need an in-house person, unless you're like the Googles of the world or you're over, I would call it, $10, $20, $40 million in rev. Then you really probably need someone in-house. But everyone else just needs to pick up the phone and call an attorney, right? And our approach is I would much rather get you out of a problem for $10,000 versus you call me when the problem's already there and now we're charging you $100,000 because it's just too deep. We're way over here when it could have been solved way over here, right? So that is the spirit and the point behind outside general counsel. We're there, we're embedded within your company, but you don't need a -- you're not paying us a salary and you're not paying us benefits. We're just there when you need us.

Robert Young IV

That's right. And it's also closer to a partnership, right? Like, we're not actually doing the day-to-day growing of the business, but by being there when the decisions are being made, we are implicitly helping you avoid catastrophic mistakes, expensive mistakes, right? A lot of times people call attorneys at their lowest moment, they're not happy at all, right? But if we can keep that ongoing communication, those lines of communications open, and then be there as the decision is being made, they're happier, we're happier, it doesn't cost them as much. And then it becomes a revolving door, right? Relationships are the most fruitful when it's mutually beneficial, and when we come in a little bit more upstream of the problem, as opposed to downstream when it's fully materialized, everybody's just a little bit happier.

Collin McKee

Right. So Kent, I'll throw this one to you and let's talk a little bit about your client base because you've got a pretty broad client base, right? You've got mom and pop shops, physicians, all the way up to like national health systems. So how does one firm handle all of that?

Kent Grover

Sure. Yep. Yep. Yeah, it's a great question. And that kind of goes back to the outside general counsel, right? We're not constantly -- I'll compare it to litigation, right? Litigation, all you're doing is litigating, right? That's all you're doing, right? Day in, day out. Outside general counsel takes a step back and we almost manage and manage risk for all of our clients, right? And then if we need to pull in a litigation attorney, even though Rob and I do it sometimes, then we'll do it. That frees up our time to help businesses from a business perspective, business legal, when they converge, right? So that gives us that time to do that, right? We -- the benefit of actually both Rob and my experience combined is we're able to serve all of the -- what I call the middle market, right? Because you have the low kind of like the smaller businesses, very small, the high businesses, and then right here where there's restaurants all the way to physicians, all the way to tech people who are leaving firms and now wanting to start their own firm because all of their shares have vested, right? So there's a lot in this span, right? And so because of our experience, our diverse experience, we are really equipped to handle most things, right? Right now we're doing a huge healthcare. We have a very robust healthcare practice. I come from -- one of the firms I worked at was a healthcare firm. That's all I did, right? And then I've also done catastrophic injury. When I was at a firm, that's all I did. When I was at another firm, business, that's all I did, right? So in those, we were able to get experiences kind of siloed at those firms, and now we're able to kind of -- excuse me -- offer that to a wide variety of clients, and we're able to give them that time because we're approaching it from a general counsel perspective versus we're really in the leads on one thing, litigation, one trial, right? Now we can take a step back and afford all of these companies our time. And thank God we have a diverse background between Rob and me combined.

Collin McKee

So let's talk a little bit about the model. Thank you for that. It's more based off membership. So, and there are different types of membership. It's not one size fit all. So you don't have to go into the minutiae of pricing or anything like that. We don't need those kind of details. But what does the client get and what give us an idea of the different flavors on the menu for the memberships that you

Robert Young IV

Yeah, so for membership, we typically try and target businesses of a specific annual recurring revenue as opposed to a specific discipline or practice area or service offering. Because businesses, I would say between one and five million dollars of annual recurring revenue. Regardless of the good product or service they provide, tend to have the same kind of issues, right? They're usually big enough to have some kind of regular need for legal, but not big enough to have inside in-house general counsel or to be regularly retaining outside attorneys independently, right? When you're smaller than that, it's a little bit tougher to try and justify having someone on call like that. But that's kind of the middle ground that we're trying to approach, right? And so with membership, just a high level menu, right? You get a dedicated attorney every month, right? So in a traditional law firm, usually the more senior attorney will speak directly to the client and then assign the work. Downstream from there, right? To the junior associates, to the junior partners, so on and so forth. But with our membership program, you get assigned a dedicated attorney and they are your attorney. They're the person who works on everything that you need, they're the person who you speak to, they're the person who updates you who you speak in contact with. So it gives you access to a dedicated attorney instead of someone who hands the work off to someone else, right? We provide unlimited contract and document review every single month. We provide unlimited contract preparation every single month. Unlimited decision protection on major moves, so you might be thinking about bringing on a new partner maybe some kind of transaction and you want some guidance through that, that's included in your membership as well. Secure legal document repository: can't tell you how many business owners that we have encountered who have a couple of documents over here a couple documents over there some of them are secure some of them are not secure and then we provide just some additional protection right because some of Like especially our healthcare companies, they have protected information that are governed by HIPAA, right? So you need to, even if you're a sole proprietor, single physician shop, those documents need to be protected. Every company that we deal with has confidential financial records, whether they're tax records, employee files, employee payment records, checks, and things like that. We have a secure document repository where all of that can be in one place. You don't have to worry about it. And if they ever need it, it's there for them to access it too. And then we also provide a reduced rate for our outside general counsel services. So if a member needs something outside of what we provide, not only do they get all the perks of their membership, but they get a discount on their hourly. For any outside general counsel services they need. So if they get included in a lawsuit, right, if they need help with bringing on someone, not only are they just thinking about it, but they want to move forward with it, we can help with that type of partnership agreement and as well as the entire transaction. So in a snapshot, that's what our membership provides.

Collin McKee

Awesome. Go ahead.

Kent Grover

Well, if you don't mind just very quickly, you were asking before how we're able to serve a wide variety of businesses, right? And in this context, we do a lot of restaurants, content creators. At the end of the day, business is business, right? That's what it is. Everyone is just, at the end of the day, trying to grow their business, scale their business. Most legal issues converge and overlap, right? Whether you're in healthcare or you're in -- healthcare is a little bit more nuanced, right? But restaurants, content creators, there's contracts, there's documents, there's everyday business decisions. So because membership is a little bit more zoomed out and we're just there when, you need a contract reviewed. You need a brand partnership contract negotiated, right? You need a partnership agreement. You need an independent contractor agreement. You need an employment agreement, right? We're able to kind of do that for a wide variety. And then because we have that time, we're not really in the weeds or we're not really -- unless, it goes beyond the scope of membership. That gives us time to now serve a whole wide variety of industries. And again, at the end of the day, a lot of these companies, that's all they need. Pick up the phone a few times a month, three, four contracts, and then that's it. And they don't want to pay $500 an hour to an attorney to do that. And that's where the value of membership comes in. And then to Rob's point, we recently reduced our hourly rate significantly for members, right? So if it goes beyond the scope of, now we need us to really resolve a dispute. That is obviously not part of membership. But then you're given an hourly rate that is much lower. And again, Collin, I told you, we live in the world of subscriptions now. We got Uber Eats. We got DoorDash. We got Amazon. We got pretty much everything, right? And so this membership subscription model is geared towards the moving trend into subscriptions, right? And then the only thing I will -- last thing I'll add is there are other companies out there that have subscriptions, right? Like, you have the LegalZooms and the LegalShields of the world. What we offer is different. It's a white glove experience. To Rob's point, we'll -- we get a dedicated attorney. That is your attorney throughout the pendency of everything. No matter if this month is -- it's an employment contract. Next month it's draft the contract, pick up the phone. That's your attorney throughout the entire thing. And we're all experienced, right? We're not going to be given, generally speaking, a paralegal or something like that. You're getting a senior attorney, white glove and not regurgitating templates, right? A lot of these subscription-based models, they have an AI-generated they have an AI-generated repository of templates. And, for instance, trusts, right? They'll just spit out a very basic trust. Rob and I, we get into the weeds with the trust. Our trusts are minimum 40, 50 pages long, and they're real trusts, right? Not just the template you pull offline. So just kind of, I wanted to put a finer point on what we do and what we offer in our subscription-based model.

Collin McKee

That's great. You covered a slew of questions while you guys were in. So that's awesome. And a mind reader at that. So excellent. Well, let's get to a bit of AI. We cover a lot of good information. So on our first call, Kent and I, we kind of discussed AI being a tool, not a replacement for a lawyer. So but there it there is risk, in using these tools. So I'll give this one to Robert, because from the litigation side of things, what is

Kent Grover

I'm a lawyer, Collin. I'm anticipating where you're going.

Collin McKee

Improper use of AI look like? Like where have you seen it actually go wrong? Maybe not in your firm, but give some good advice on what not to do with AI when it comes to law practice.

Robert Young IV

Yeah, so with AI, like most things, it should be trust but verify. I've seen attorneys in court get in trouble because an AI tool hallucinated maybe terms in a contract. So maybe it had term A, B, and C, and then it conflated them into a new term that wasn't really there. And then they relied on that to make an argument, right? So we have a duty of candor to the court. Excuse me. We have a duty not to lie to the court, not to mislead the court, right? So if the court is reading our papers and it's relying on our papers, meaning our motions or briefs and things like that. And we say a contract says something, it better say that. And I've seen in a handful of times where AI has hallucinated contract terms. Another really big issue is people who rely on AI exclusively for research without verification. AI is notorious for hallucinating case law that doesn't exist, or after a series of edits, changing the num numbers or the name of the case. And then now this attorney is in front of this judge saying that California case requires X. And lo and behold, not only does California law not require X, the case that you're using to say that it does is completely false, right? There's other times when, you're trying to go through documents, maybe you get a big set of documents and the AI misses something, or the AI says that something's there that it's not, right? There's just a lot of risk when people don't verify the information that comes with it. So we need to treat it as a tool that we can trust. But verify, right? It can definitely make your life easier. It can definitely make your life more efficient, especially your professional life as an attorney. But just like we would with maybe a junior associate, right? They're giving us some work product. We're gonna say thank you for the work product. We're gonna go over it with the fine-tooth comb and then make sure that before it either goes to the client or to the court, that it is what it's supposed to be and it says what it's supposed to say, and everything in there is correct. Verified and true.

Kent Grover

Yeah, Collin, if you don't mind. So to Rob's point in the litigation area and perspective, we've seen lawyers get sanctioned

Robert Young IV

Yes, thousands of dollars.

Kent Grover

10, 20, 30, if not more thousands of dollars because they're continuously using AI and then misleading the court. And it can get bad. Attorneys are getting sanctioned left and right nowadays for it. So we've got to be careful with it. I love this question because I feel like there's a misnomer out there that AI is bad. AI is not bad. AI is a thought partner, right? It allows you to basically have a sounding board, go through your thoughts, organize them. And yes, AI will spit back at a decent template, but the way I look at it is AI might do 35, 40% of the work, but you then need the critical 60, 65% of the attorney who's actually gonna go through it, right? Rob and I, we, of course, like most modern firms leverage AI, but we might spend six hours still on a document, right? That AI did generate at least a base template or a base thought earlier in the day, but there's this misnomer that, oh, just copy and paste. Oh, it only took you an hour because you use AI. No, you gotta spit it back. You gotta tell, no, you're making the wrong assumption here. You're doing the wrong thing. What about this? What about that? Did you cross-check this, right? That doesn't go away. That still requires an attorney to do that. And those who are abusing AI, yeah, then you're gonna have a problem with that, right? But if you're using it as a thought partner, kind of just like another attorney or another paralegal, another associate, that's where you can really benefit from it. And a lot of people, another misnomer is, it's gonna replace a job. If you're thinking that way, you kind of have an antiquated way of thinking. All it does is it shifts resources, right? So instead of, for instance, at big law firms like Rob and I know, when you're a junior associate, when we were coming up in law school, there was no AI and LexisNexis and Westlaw were actually just moving to be more modern, right? So we still went through books to find case law, right? So instead of a junior associate needing to sit there and spend five, six hours on one research project, now you are freed up to do four projects at the same time, right? And so it's just reallocating resources. Don't fire that associate 'cause you no longer need a research associate, just move that associate to a different project, right? Knowing that AI is in the back helping, right? And so I think we're gonna really see AI evolve very quickly and it already is, but again, it's a thought partner, It's a tool and you'll be surprised how many hours we still put in refining a document or refining something using AI. And so yeah, great tool. And I think it's gonna be great for the legal industry.

Robert Young IV

Yeah. And to that point, just really quickly, Collin, I actually have two more examples. So another thing that a lot of people take for granted is the confidentiality or the privileged nature of documents. And so not every AI tool is created equally. There are some AI tools that don't offer document protection, right? So if a court subpoenas certain records from certain AI tools, it has to turn them over, right? There are some AI tools that encrypt your messages with them or encrypt the documents that you upload or and things of that nature, right? And so There was actually a story in the news maybe a week or two ago about an expert who was hired to testify at a trial, and the opposing counsel got wind that he had used AI to help develop his opinion. And so they were able to subpoena his records with his chats with AI, and he had completely outsourced his expert opinion to the AI and then attempted to regurgitate that in court. And he had to feed documents into the AI tool. And the documents that he fed were meant to be privileged and confidential. And by him doing that, he then helped to get rid of that privilege protection, that confidentiality protection of those documents. Those documents became discoverable. He was then kicked out from the trial and they had to continue without him. It's a huge deal. So, like Kent said, it's a tool, but No one would say a hammer is bad because if you hit your finger, you can hurt yourself, right? You need to use the tool correctly. You need to know how to engage with the tool and then use it to make your job easier, more efficient, and more effective.

Collin McKee

Yep. And

Kent Grover

And the last thing, sorry, Collin, is we're able to pass, like when lawyers say there's one more thing, there's never one more thing, right?

Collin McKee

I'm learning that quickly.

Kent Grover

Yeah, last thing is we're able to pass those savings on to our clients, right? So instead of something taking 20 hours that used to take 20 hours because we didn't have these tools, now it takes 6 or 7, we're able to pass those savings on to our clients. And again, if you're not using AI, your clients are now going to get, now they're going to start to get upset, right? Because it's like, why do I see 20 hours on the bill when I know you could have done it at six, seven, eight hours, right? So it's also something that benefits clients.

Collin McKee

Yeah, and that's what I was gonna get to. Again, you guys read my mind. I don't hate that. It's not just utilizing it as a tool, it's also knowing what tool to use when, right? And so you're using enterprise grade, I think you said Harvey, Kent, and we all know Clio, there are tools meant for attorneys that are encrypted, that are gonna protect things. It's not the same as using a free version of ChatGPT. So on top of how you're using a tool, make sure you're not using a hammer when you're supposed to use a saw or whatever the case might be.

Kent Grover

Absolutely. And at ELS, we are not only using enterprise-grade AI tools specific for legal that are based on very specific models, we're actually building our own tech stack, which is really important because it's very exciting. So we're kind of moving into the tech space, being a legal tech company as well as a law firm. But again, as AI develops, if you're not integrating it into what suits you, we are a different practice than law firm ABC right and so we need to develop we're developing our own tech stack that's going to help our clients based on what we want and it's going to be a very unique way of doing it and tech stack.

Collin McKee

Awesome. And so one little thing I wanted to touch on, and you did bring it up a little bit, Kent, but I want to kind of reinforce it. So you guys didn't replace any staff with AI. You're building it without the need for some of these entry-level students, or sorry, associates to come in and do the grunt work that we all know that AI can do. So that does bring a question to those, say coming out of their last year in law school, if AI is doing all these things that used to be legacy baby associate responsibilities, where does that leave our next generation of lawyers that are that, what should they be doing? What advice can you

Kent Grover

No. Yeah, I think everyone needs to become AI literate. I think that's very important. If you're scared of AI or you're not practicing with it, using it as a tool day by day, becoming literate, frankly, you will probably get left behind. But what I would say to the 3L coming out of law school or about to take the bar is not only become AI literate, know that the tasks that we, for instance, Rob and I had to start doing when we got out of law school, those may not be there anymore. I don't need you to spend 20 hours on research on one area of law, but now you're gonna be doing multiple, like I'm moving you to a different project, right? Or I'm moving you into using AI for us that benefits us and then producing the work product way faster. And now I'm giving you a little bit more work, maybe four or five projects, 'cause now I know you can handle it 'cause you're leveraging the stack that we're creating, right? So I wouldn't, I think it actually comes down to the firm more than anything, if a firm is not able to adapt to this AI world that we live in and they are cutting people because they're like, "Oh, I don't need a baby associate." Those are the firms that I think that are gonna probably be on their way out, right? So it's as important for the firm to adapt as it is for these 3Ls and these new law students coming out of law school to also adapt.

Robert Young IV

Yeah. I agree with that. I think that so my grandmother she worked actually for the court system and so she would go around with these cards and she would write every single thing down, right? Because they didn't have computers back at that time, right? And so they would spend copious amounts of time writing things down. When the computer came and was introduced, their jobs weren't lost, their jobs were improved, right? And we think of that as the same way. Here, right? So the junior associates, the paralegals, the assistants aren't necessarily going to be replaced. Their jobs are going to become easier and they're going to shift, right? So some of the mundane tasks that AI can competently do, maybe like a first pass at research, some document comparison, maybe identifying material in a huge volume of papers, right? Maybe that can do a first pass by AI. Then the junior associate can then verify that and then the person above them can then even do another pass, right? And then like Kent mentioned at the answer to the last question, those cost savings are then shifted to the client. Right? So this is an improvement. This is not a way to say we don't need people who are candlelighters anymore because now we have street lights. It's not that. This is just improving the way that we already do things and something that's better for everybody and something that can be cheaper ultimately for the client, which then makes everybody happy.

Collin McKee

That's great. It kind of covers my wrap up. I wanted to ask what to start doing, what to stop doing, and where we see things going in two years. So the start doing is obviously get yourself literate with AI, with the right type of AI for a law practice. Stop doing, stop thinking that you're gonna replace your staff with AI, right? You've got a good staff, just get them trained. You know. Where do you see it in two years? Well, you guys are kind of building it. So where's what's your vision? You guys can, take it, try to keep it under ten minutes. We don't want to be here all day. But where do you see this in two years? Or what's your vision? Where do you see Elite Legal Strategy in two

Kent Grover

Go ahead. Yeah, so I think we kind of covered it from an AI perspective, right? But where we see ourselves, ELS, is not just a law firm. We're not a brick and mortar law firm. We will be expanding nationally, and we already are, but we kind of see ourselves moving into a little bit of the tech space, building that tech stack, really leveraging the appropriate AI tools, and then training our people to use them, and create such a unique stack and such a unique experience for our clients and our members that they're not gonna wanna go anywhere else, right? Then it's not even replaceable. It's not even something that you can repeat, right? So that's where we see ourself in two years. We definitely will be all over the place. And I wanna kind of add right now, we have paralegals, we have attorneys we work with, we have a C-suite, like a COO, we have someone coming on board that's gonna be a CSO. Everyone's all over the place, right? We got one in Hawaii, we got one in Canada, we got one in Atlanta, we got one in, of course, California, kind of all over the place. So where we see ourselves in two years is really kind of expanded nationally and helping all the businesses that are kind of right here. Like I said before, right, it's almost gonna be like, hey, if you're in this area and I have a problem, how come you're not calling ELS, right? It should be the brand that everyone knows and goes to with their legal issues and legal problems.

Robert Young IV

Yeah. Very succinctly, we see our company being as integral to other companies as an ADP, as an Intuit QuickBooks, right? There isn't really something that exists like that in the legal space, something that people can interact with that's supported by human experts on the other side. It has its own unique tech stack that's uniquely tailored to the specific issues of the user. We see ourselves as integral to businesses as those softwares just in the legal space.

Collin McKee

Awesome. Yeah. Well, what I really hear if we boil it down is you're utilizing all the tools that are available now so that you can give more of your personal time to your clients. You want to be a part of all of it when you can be. Instead of replacing it and using these as, say, an avatar for you, you want to have it move everything off your desk possible so you can really focus on the client. And so I applaud you for that strategy. I think that's exactly the right way of doing it.

Kent Grover

And create that experience. And last thing is definitely in two years, we hope and are planning for the membership to really grow, our subscription model to really grow.

Collin McKee

Cool. With that, how can sorry, how can people find out more about you and connect with Elite Legal Strategy?

Kent Grover

Absolutely. The easiest way is our website, elitelegalstrategy.com. You might see our ads pushing on Meta already. They're already getting out there. So, go to our website at any point. Rob and I, the unique part about us is you're not going to get a receptionist. You will, but you're not going to get someone who's just intake and then you're never going to talk to an attorney. Feel free to pick up the phone, call us. You can text me, you can call me. I'm super open. And you're going to be dealing with Rob or myself or a senior attorney from day one.

Robert Young IV

And we're also very active on LinkedIn too. So that's a great way for people to reach out, message us directly. Very responsive on there, very active. Our company has its own LinkedIn page as well. So feel free to reach out anytime.

Collin McKee

Awesome. We'll put that all in the show notes. Rob, Kent, this has been excellent. I really appreciate the time. It's encouraging to see how people are utilizing this as a force multiplier and not as a way to lay off half their staff. So and to our audience, if there's anyone here listening that's interested in if their own firm is exposed or you want to learn more about AI, if you think you're behind, that's what we do here at Endeavors AI. We like to work with small businesses and firms with their AI readiness and do something similar to what these gentlemen have done. Make sure you're creating leverage without liability. And so please reach out to us. We're at endeavorsai.com. And I'm Collin McKee for the Endeavors AI Podcast. We will see you next time. Thank you, gentlemen.

Kent Grover

Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Collin.