"Don't Use AI" vs. "Don't Use That AI" — A Law Firm Partner Explains

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 guest today is Shirin Adelman, partner at Lengea Law. And Lengea is a boutique healthcare firm out of New York City, and their clients are practitioners that most people don't think of when it comes to healthcare — until you take a closer look. Talking about med spas, IV hydration, and wellness clinics, dental, veterinary, and mental health. And here's why I wanted to have her on. Shirin came out of banking and corporate finance before she ever practiced law, and inside a healthcare firm she's the one handling the technology side — SaaS agreements, terms of service, privacy policy, data — and she's been working with the state of Connecticut on its own cybersecurity strategy. So she fits right in line with where I think a lot of practice owners are about to walk over without realizing it. Shirin, welcome to the show.

Shirin Adelman

Collin, I appreciate it. Appreciate being here, and it's a pleasure to be here. Appreciate the invite.

Collin McKee

Awesome. Let's start before law, because I think your path is not the usual one. So take me back. You did banking, M&A, and then Penn Law and Wharton, then private wealth, and then back to actually practicing law. So walk us through that.

Shirin Adelman

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Happy to do it. So after graduating from college — I went to Princeton University; it's a big feeder into the investment banking world — I kind of flowed into being an analyst in finance and mergers and acquisitions for a couple of years, which was a fantastic experience. Definitely appreciative and grateful. I always wanted to be a lawyer and I wanted to practice law, so I decided to go back to law school. And at law school, I went to Penn, University of Pennsylvania. There was a Penn Law alum who was recruiting for private wealth management at Goldman Sachs. And he sold me on it. He said lawyers are great at this, since we're advisors and we like to listen. So I then joined the private wealth management division at Credit Suisse, after spending a summer at Goldman, and I was at Credit Suisse for about five years. It was a great experience. Loved it.

Collin McKee

Cool. Sorry, go ahead — I was going to get to where you are, but I didn't want to interrupt if you were still telling your story. So please continue.

Shirin Adelman

Sure, sure. I mean, obviously it was very different than practicing law. I loved it. I was out in the field, I was knocking on doors, meeting people, and just learned really valuable lessons from sales that have definitely helped with the law practice today. So it's a very humbling experience, but a great experience in terms of earning trust and client service. Very useful skills.

Collin McKee

And then come to where you are today, and your partner, Sara. Tell me about how you two ended up working together. Because there was a line that kind of stuck with me from our first conversation, where you said be sure to be nice to your mentees. And I've been thinking about that one. So tell us about that story.

Shirin Adelman

Yeah. So when I went back to practicing law, I joined a law firm in New York — it's one of the bigger law firms in New York — and Sara was fresh out of law school. I was a more seasoned associate, and we became friends, and it became a little bit of a mentor-mentee relationship. And it was fantastic. It's a very intense law firm, so we were working very hard. And we struck up a friendship. She was more entrepreneurial; I was more of your traditional attorney. And she went off and started a number of successful businesses, one of which was a multi-location medical spa. I continued practicing in corporate and healthcare law, and then we reconnected and started working together at Lengea about five years ago. So the lesson I definitely take away from that is always be nice to your mentee, because you never know. They may end up being your boss.

Collin McKee

That's awesome. Great advice. That could be the whole show right there. You never know where it's going to come full circle. So be nice to your mentees, mentors, everybody, because you don't know where you're going to end up a couple of years later. So for anybody that doesn't know Lengea, could you just describe it — who you serve and what the firm actually does for them?

Shirin Adelman

Yeah, absolutely. So we work with medical spas, wellness clinics, IV hydration clinics, physician practices. We've expanded to dental and veterinary clinics and mental health clinics. We help them get set up, and help them get set up for success in terms of legal compliance — and also as they progress in their life cycle. They're going to be facing different issues. So in the beginning it's more just getting set up in a compliant way with the right entity structure, the right agreements. But then, after a year or so, they're going to have human resources issues. They may be dealing with a disgruntled patient. At some point they may want to sell their business. So we do the whole gamut. We even defend clinics in investigatory audits by the state boards. So there's a whole life cycle that we experience with our clients. We help with all these issues. It's very, very exciting.

Collin McKee

Awesome. So that's great, and you've had wonderful success, and I want to talk a little bit about that. So you went from having something like 25 clients to more than 2,500. Inc. 5000 stated a 600-and-something percent growth over three years, which is phenomenal. But that doesn't happen by accident. So what was your actual mechanism? How did you get there?

Shirin Adelman

So I think Sara and I have very complementary skill sets. She's very entrepreneurial, she's very great at marketing, she's an e-commerce specialist — I would say she's a master of e-commerce. I'm more of a traditional lawyer. So I think we have a little bit of a yin and yang relationship. She drives the firm forward, I make sure we don't get too ahead of ourselves. I'm more of the risk manager for the firm. So over time it's been a fantastic partnership, and we know each other outside of this work environment, so there's been a trust there from the beginning, which has been fantastic. And obviously we've grown. We have a fantastic team of associates. And I think we created a really positive environment where people can make mistakes and they're not judged too harshly. Our goal is to help people develop into excellent practitioners. So one or two mistakes is not going to be the end of someone's career. We give people a lot of opportunities. We want them to be involved in client interface, marketing, writing blogs, obviously doing excellent legal work, which is a non-negotiable. But I think the combination of all those things, and providing opportunities for our team, has really helped us grow.

Collin McKee

Cool. And then as far as your strategy — I mean, you didn't go with the legacy process. If I read it correctly, you're more in a membership model than the hourly billing model. And then you do a lot with a template library, so you're not creating things anew all the time — of course it is modified to the needs of your clients. But are there some other things about how you guys go about it that helped with that hyper-growth strategy that I didn't mention?

Shirin Adelman

Yeah, absolutely. I think being a tech-based firm, and being super organized with all of our documents, is something that's different from some other firms which I had seen. And I think lawyers were trained to be lawyers, but also being really adept at the business aspect of running a law firm — I think that's also helped. So for example, the template library: just having access to the exact documents that you need at that moment makes all the difference, as opposed to searching and talking to other people at the firm and not being able to locate it. All that type of thing takes up time during a workday. So just being ultra-organized, I think, has helped us quite a bit. We are remote, we are a distributed law firm, so we don't have commute times, intra-office meetings. It's very tech-based, and that also helps with our efficiency in terms of getting the work product out quickly to clients and being super responsive. That's a huge priority for us as well — just being incredibly responsive to clients.

Collin McKee

And the template thing, I find kind of interesting, because a lot of attorneys would look at templates and they would say that's just a commodity, then your IP can be stolen, this, that, and the other. How did you guys get comfortable with templates where others kind of shy away from that?

Shirin Adelman

Yeah. So a template is just a starting point. I think it's helpful because it makes the drafting more efficient, but it has to be negotiated for the deal. So some templates we do offer — like, for example, consents — and they are part of our membership, that you have access to this library of templates. Clients can download them and repurpose them pretty quickly. But in terms of more involved agreements, like a management services agreement — which is critical in so many of the states in which we work, in which ownership of a med spa is more restricted — that's a really negotiated document. So the templates provide a great base, and it's more just organized access to the document as opposed to access to a final product, which definitely needs the lawyer's view, the human oversight. So it starts with a template, but it certainly doesn't end with a template for the most part.

Collin McKee

And I'm sure that helped with the growth at the pace that it did. So now, knowing what you do now — and maybe everything went swimmingly, but it's probably not the case — if you would go back to your twenty-five-client firm self and start again, is there anything that you would do differently?

Shirin Adelman

It's a really good question. I think maybe broadening out just from the medical spa space to more practice areas. I think sometimes having confidence in yourself to broaden beyond what we're known for, earlier on, would have been helpful. I mean, we are branching out and we have branched out into other areas in the healthcare space, but we also had those skills when we started. And I think that kind of goes back to just believing in yourself and believing in your capabilities in the beginning. So I think having that niche in the medical spa space definitely helped fuel the growth. Sara used to run a 12-location medical spa. So that type of industry knowledge is invaluable for clients. And that's initially, and still, how we gather many clients — we're known for that expertise. And in addition to that, we obviously have skill sets in other areas. So I think maybe complementing that in the beginning would have been great. But I think it's been fantastic overall. I mean, again, I think having that depth in the medical spa space has been invaluable.

Collin McKee

Cool. So was there anything — I like the good, the bad, and the ugly — anything that broke along the way? Because with that massive rate of growth, hopefully it didn't, but most likely something had to give along the way when you're growing that rapidly. So like intake, or turnaround time, quality control, a massive inbox that was hard to get to. Was there any of that for you guys during your growth?

Shirin Adelman

Yeah. I mean, when we started, it was definitely more of a startup. So a lot of the fundamental documents — even engagement letters — they needed to be drafted. So there was a tremendous amount of foundation that needed to be built. And clearly it's not going to be 100% all the time. I mean, even now, the industry is evolving so rapidly, you're always going to be playing catch-up with some new development. I think other things that sometimes would come to a head — again, I'm more of a risk manager and Sara's more of a visionary, marketing, kind of go, go, go. So in the beginning, obviously we would have differences of opinion. And then I think we soon realized that that's actually a strength. There are some things that people can connect with — more regulatory-minded people, more attorneys — versus just focusing on growing the firm. I remember when I was in graduate school, I did a joint program at the Wharton Business School, and one of the professors in fixed income — so, bonds — he was saying, in the 80s bonds were yielding 15% a year. There was nothing compared to the rate of the stock market, which was much higher. But if you made 15% every year for 30 years, how well you would have done, if you hadn't had major failures. And that's kind of the mindset I go with. If you can avoid major catastrophes over a long period of time, you're going to be doing great. So I think having that mindset is incredibly helpful for sustainable growth — not just fireworks growth, but something that is meant to last.

Collin McKee

Yep. So you kind of covered another question I was going to ask later on, as far as you and Sara and that dynamic. But yeah, I agree. It's good to have someone with an opposing view working with you, so you guys can kind of even each other out. If you could think of an example where that was the case — where she wanted to go, she's more of the risk taker and the entrepreneur mindset, and you're more of the defensive, managing that risk — was there anything in particular? One project, or say a tool that she wanted to add? Can you give an example there?

Shirin Adelman

Yeah. I think from a technology perspective, and incorporating technology into our practice, she's been fantastic. She sees things a couple of years before the rest of us. So, for example, even AI, and incorporating that into the practice. When you're practicing law and you've been drilled into you to make sure that you understand the concepts, make sure that you're proofreading, spend hours and hours to locate that one word — bringing in another component to the practice, like AI, it's hard for a lot of lawyers to accept. And she was an early adopter. So in that respect, we had a little bit of a difference of opinion. But over time I've seen the wisdom of AI. It's a fantastic complement to our practice. So I view it more as a junior associate. I know some companies have AI as a board member. So it's definitely something here to stay. And it's just interesting when people see the value initially, versus some other people who — it takes them a little bit more time to adjust. We get there eventually altogether, but I think having that advantage in the beginning is a big heads up. It's a big advantage.

Collin McKee

Sure. So let's pivot a little bit — stay on AI, but more on the client side. What do you see that your clients are doing with AI? Because they are. Everyone's using it. You represent med spas, wellness clinics, dental practices, what have you. What are you seeing them actually use AI for inside of their businesses right now?

Shirin Adelman

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, from our interactions with them — clients used to come to us with one or two questions. Many of them are healthcare providers, they've never run a business. So this is all new to them. So many of them wouldn't have any questions when we first started working with them. Now we're dealing with clients who have two- or three-page questions, like a memo of questions. And many of them are on point. It's very thorough. Some of them are a little bit not relevant. And I think that's why you need that human oversight. You need that experienced attorney parsing through all of the AI information, because there's a lot of it. But overall, I think clients are better equipped than they've ever been, frankly. It's more work and more effort to review these two-page lists of questions, but I think everyone is just much better informed going into it. Starting a business is no joke. So there's always something to think about. So it's actually been good. I think it's been good overall.

Collin McKee

Good. So to get into the warning aspect of it. A practitioner takes, say, client information — a patient note, intake form, or a chart — and they just put it into ChatGPT because they want to clean it up and put it in a more digestible format. Walk me through what just happened there from a legal perspective if someone does that.

Shirin Adelman

Yeah. So again, AI is not going away, but clients need to be very careful, because a lot of that is protected patient health information, which is completely confidential. So I've seen articles with some of these AI platforms that have wiped out patient databases in a matter of three minutes. So you have to be very careful with the platforms that you're using, especially with such confidential, sensitive patient health information. And that's one of my biggest concerns with just putting everything into AI — because again, it's another platform, it's in development. But we're dealing with a lot of private information. So navigating that is going to be interesting. And that's a huge challenge that clients are facing right now.

Collin McKee

So is your advice don't use AI, or don't use that sort of AI? Because I think a lot of lawyers are almost at the point right now where they want to put their head in the sand and tell their clients not to use it, because of all the constantly changing litigation and the laws being written. But of course, as you said, AI is not going away. So what kind of advice are you giving as far as the AI use that your clients have inside of their businesses?

Shirin Adelman

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's very hard. We don't want people to be completely reliant on AI, but it's going to be a part of every practice. I think just being very selective as to which platforms you choose. Make sure all the appropriate protections are built in, in the case of sensitive information about a patient or a customer. Obviously you don't want to dump everything into AI, but there are some platforms that are HIPAA compliant. Make sure they have HIPAA certifications, and hold those platforms to that promise. Because again, AI is not going away. And the expectation from everyone, frankly, and the time span for turnarounds, has shortened. Just because everything is so fast these days, it's going to be an indispensable part of any practice. So I think you just have to be very selective about your AI, and not necessarily use it all the time, and also just be incredibly selective about your providers — and make sure they have HIPAA protections, they have privacy protections there, and compliance is their number one priority.

Collin McKee

Yep. Yeah, I think more people are learning it, but there's still a lot of people that are unaware that, depending on what tool you're using, you could be held liable if they don't have those protections in there. And that's a pretty big gotcha, or it can be, in certain instances. So that's great advice. So let's take it internally to Lengea Law. What are you guys using? Can you give us some examples of some AI tools that you guys are using within your firm?

Shirin Adelman

Yeah, absolutely. We use AI for some billing, some automated messaging back to clients letting them know that we've received their message. We use it for initial drafts of documents. It's almost like a junior associate. Going back to that theme of becoming overly reliant — it's not a tool to use and completely be dependent on. You don't want to just give AI a task and just let it shoot out a document and then just send that to the client. Human oversight is critical. But I think doing more of the administrative tasks, some billing issues, and even first drafts has been really helpful. When you're working on a document after hours, enhancing that speed of the initial draft has been critical. Obviously there's always human oversight that's needed, and lawyers, you still need to be at the top of your game in terms of parsing through what's being written. But just having something there — it's always easier to review something than to type it in from scratch. So that's been incredibly helpful.

Collin McKee

And this is a question, not a gotcha, but one I like to ask everyone, just to see if there's room for improvement. Is there anything, even with these new tools, that's still eating up a lot of your time? Not an interesting problem, but a boring one. Something mundane that's been on the list for years, but it's still something that you're manually doing that you really wish could be taken off your plate.

Shirin Adelman

Something that we wish AI would be helping us with? Yeah, I think time entries. I know there are a lot of great software platforms with respect to that. Again, a lot of that we have to be very careful about, because these are client-sensitive information. I think with time entries, more AI advancements would be very helpful. With a lot of lawyers — some people bill on a fixed price basis, but a lot of lawyers still bill for their time. And so you end up spending maybe a half hour, an hour a day putting your time in. And again, you want it to be accurate, because that goes to the client. So I think refinements in that area would be fantastic.

Collin McKee

How much time roughly would you say that takes up in your average week?

Shirin Adelman

So I know many attorneys who spend Saturdays billing their time — which, after a long week, you should be spending your Saturday having a nice, enjoyable time either with your family or just relaxing, and not necessarily billing time. So it's interesting, because sometimes the harder you work, the less time you have to bill, which should be the inverse. But you definitely want your time to reflect all the work you're doing. And so I think in off hours a lot of people do their billing.

Collin McKee

Yep. And don't feel bad — everyone I talk to has something in that category. That's still that hanging chad of, man, it'd be nice. And of course, if it's taking up your whole Saturday, and you just spent Monday through Friday intently doing the work that you do, you need that time to really relax and recuperate. So hopefully we can get that off your plate, or you get it off yours with one of these tools here soon. Awesome. Well, let's close it out — a couple of questions before we go. If you could tell our audience one thing every practice owner should do this week before they touch an AI tool, maybe in preparation for it, before they just throw something into an AI?

Shirin Adelman

I think it's really important for any practitioner to realize that we have to be at the top of our game. We have to know enough to parse through what's relevant with what AI creates as an output, versus what's not relevant or helpful. And it's that old mantra that you always have to be growing and learning. Knowledge is cumulative, and I think that's incredibly important. I think if you view AI as more of a junior associate who's providing a draft of something, and you're reviewing it with an experienced eye, it's a great combination. And who knows — in a number of years AI may become a senior associate, and I think it's already going in that direction. It's evolving so rapidly. But I still think there's a significant place for human oversight, and especially for lawyers. We still have to always be open-minded, learning and growing. It never quite ends. So there's always something changing with rules and laws, and especially in the healthcare space. So that would be my big piece of advice: just never stop learning and growing.

Collin McKee

Great advice. Secondly, where do you think AI and healthcare compliance are headed, say, in the next two years?

Shirin Adelman

I think — you know, it's interesting. A lot of times when our clients' patients come in, they need to be evaluated. And I've had a number of clients say that there are some AI tools that will evaluate the patient and write down the patient health history before the procedure is actually performed. And so that clearance piece is a very big issue in legal compliance with medical spas, and just medical practices in general. It's called the good faith exam. And I think it's actually happening in a number of medical practices already. It's that the law needs to catch up with what's going on in practice. So, having these AI tools actually evaluate a patient and clear them for a procedure — is compliant, it fills the compliance box. And I think it's also a technological advancement that's probably going to grow. It's just that the laws haven't incorporated this concept yet into their text. And I think that's going to be an interesting development, even just from a regulatory standpoint — just to incorporate technology into statutes and how we use them responsibly.

Collin McKee

Yep. Interesting times. I mean, I say two years, and look, we'll probably be six months down the road and it'll be there already. It's just happening. So, excellent. And lastly, where can people find out more about you and your work there at Lengea Law?

Shirin Adelman

Absolutely. So we do offer complimentary initial consultations. We can be reached at our website, it's lengealaw.com. And we look forward to speaking to prospective clients, and the complimentary consults are a great way to meet people. So definitely look forward to it.

Collin McKee

Awesome. Well, Shirin, thank you. That was a great discussion. You stated things plainly and gave some great advice for people to inculcate in their practices. So everything Shirin mentioned — Lengea Law, how to reach her — will be in the show notes. We'll make sure to leave links there for you. And if you're listening and wondering how your own firm or small business actually stands with AI — whether you're exposed, behind, or ready to move forward — that's what we do here at Endeavors AI. We work with small firms and businesses on AI readiness, finding gaps and building workflows, making sure they're creating something that won't create liability for them when they're trying to create that efficiency that our AI tools can avail us of. So reach out at Endeavors AI. And I'm Collin McKee. For Shirin, this is the Endeavors AI Podcast. We thank you for watching, and we'll see you on the next one.

Shirin Adelman

Thank you. Thank you so much.