TLH Ep. 47 Hamid Kohan on The New Blueprint for Law Firm Growth

Hello, Legal Helm listeners!

Today, we’re excited to welcome Hamid Kohan, President and CEO of Legal Soft, a company helping law firms scale through virtual staffing, automation, and modern operational support.

With a background in software engineering and extensive experience in Silicon Valley, Hamid brings a unique perspective to legal industry transformation. Since founding Legal Soft, he has focused on equipping law firms with the people, processes, and technology they need to grow efficiently, while enabling attorneys to spend more time serving their clients. Under his leadership, Legal Soft has become a trusted partner for firms seeking to modernize their operations.

In this episode, we’ll explore how technology and operational innovation are reshaping legal services, the future of scalable law firm models, and what it takes to drive meaningful change in a traditionally complex industry. Join us for an insightful conversation on building smarter, more efficient legal organizations. Stay tuned!

Your Host

Bim Dave is Helm360’s CEO. With 20+ years in the legal industry, his keen understanding of how law firms and lawyers use technology has propelled Helm360 to the industry’s forefront. A technical expert with a penchant for developing solutions that improve business systems and user experience, Bim has a knack for bringing high quality IT architects and developers together to create innovative, useable solutions to the legal arena.

Hour Guest

Hamid Kohan is an experienced Entrepreneur with a demonstrated history of working in computer software and the Legal industry. Hamid Kohan received his bachelor’s degree in engineering from Chico State University at the age of 17 and quickly was recruited to Silicon Valley to begin his High Tech career. While working with several companies in the high-tech arena, he received his MBA in business marketing at the age of 21. Mr. Kohan was involved in several high-profile companies such as Grid Systems where he served as the Sr. Manager of Product Development, working alongside associates pioneering the first ever Laptop computer.

Bim Dave: Hello everyone and welcome to the Legal Helm where we explore the evolving intersection of law and technology. I’m your host, Bim Dave, CEO of Helm360. Today’s guest brings a unique blend of engineering roots, Silicon Valley experience and legal industry innovation. Hamid Kohan is the president and CEO of Legal Soft a company that helps law firms scale through virtual staffing, automation, and modern operational support.

Hamid’s career spans, software engineering, tech leadership, and now legal sector transformation. Since founding Legal Soft he’s focused on giving law firms the people, processes and tools they need to grow efficiently and free up lawyers to focus on serving clients. Under his leadership Legal Soft has become a go-to partner for firms looking to modernize how they operate.

Hamid, it’s great to have you on The Legal Helm. Welcome to the show.

Hamid Kohan: Thank you, Bim. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for that.

Bim Dave: So Hamid, um, again, thanks for for taking some time out of your busy schedule to join us today. I would love if you could kind of share with our audience a little bit about your early career in software engineering and tech that kind of led you into the legal industry and how you, how you ended up founding Legal Soft.

Hamid Kohan: Sure, sure. Um, I went to engineering school in Northern California. I graduated when I was 17, which was kind of early. So I right away, got recruited into Silicon Valley. Uh, my first engineering job, um, was there before there was kind of internet, laptops, cell phones and everything else. So we worked for several companies like Sun Macrosystem.

I was there for like eight years. Hitachi, compact variety of hp, those companies that I worked on, we had a couple of good successful runs with IPOs and so forth. And then I moved to Los Angeles where I had a tech company working with data management system for nonprofit organizations. And suddenly I, I got my MBA in San Jose also, and then I, um, came across the legal sector just as a sort of.

Friendly evaluation of a friend’s law firm and oh my God, I was, uh, shocked that, uh, how far behind there were. Imagine coming from Silicon Valley and then going into law, we were pushing the edge of technology in every second. Globally. And then I came to law, and this is like six, seven years ago. My first impression was that if I leave the attorneys alone, they’re still wearing their pagers wAIting at the fax machine because they, they refuse to adopt technology.

So that was my first impression and I started working in sort of. Realigning, automating staffing, skilling law firms, the way that we read in the Silicon Valley way, where you, you don’t grow 10%, 20%, you’re like three x, five x you know, the, the tech method. Uh, you go global, you go do this. So I started doing that for the firms.

My first challenge with the most firms that I start doing management consulting or coaching, or fractional, COO, whatever they called it, uh, was lack of qualified, affordable legal staff. So every time I wanted to expand and grow the firm, there was like. Great. I can get the cases, I can do this and this, but where are the, where am I gonna get the people?

So, I started looking sort of globally, thinking outside the box, finding some trAIned talent globally, um, in multiple countries. And the first time I introduced that to the, to the firms in California, they all sAId, you crazy. I’m not. Basically trusting anybody globally to my CRM and my financials and my client information, especially, uh, HIPAA compliance and stuff.

And I sAId, look, even if you call right now, your insurance, your American Express, you’re the bank. Everybody you talk to is not in the US basically. So we already trusting them with all of information anyway, and the big boys are doing it. So I started recruiting, trAIning, and, and placing. Uh, virtual staff globally into the law firms in the US.

So, I started from legal assistance, went to intake specialists, went to case managers, paralegals. All the way to remote attorneys, what we call them. There are attorneys in these other countries like Columbia, Ecuador, so forth, but they basically put their practice aside and become like a paralegal or junior associate for the attorneys here.

So, they do discoveries, they do motions, they even do drafting of complAInts and so forth for the firms here. So now we have close to a thousand firms that we’ve done this for. Over 3,500 active positions into the firms, anywhere from personal injury, employment, mass court, and other to the transactional law, immigration, family law, all of the above.

Uh, so that was the, the first sort of initiative. And then we develop a platform to be able to manage it, because now you have all of these people, we have offices in seven countries. How do we manage them? Incentivize them, uh, so they don’t become like a Upwork people where they jump jobs every day for little increase in pay, or they work three jobs.

So, we develop a platform where we monitor and track all of our virtual staff on screenshots. Every 15 minutes, we record their calls. We record every URL, they go to keyboard mouse, and we give them a huge incentive program. To have a retention because you don’t wanna spend the time getting a virtual staff somewhere, uh, and then trAIn them or work with you for six months and then jump ship.

So, we even have retirement account set up in seven countries. So people actually start having like similar to 4 0 1 Ks that we will have here. They have it there to just make sure they’re fully committed into the firms. We have firms anywhere from one or two staff, uh, my several largest firms that have over a hundred of virtual staff in the firm that is spread throughout the entire organization.

Bim Dave: so, so really in terms of the, the kind of virtual staffing element of it. That’s kind of how that’s now kind of grown into what sounds like more of a platform that you are offering, right? A technology platform.

Hamid Kohan: Yes.

Bim Dave: So help, so help me understand, um, why, why do, so why are firms coming to you and what, what’s the kind of core problem that you are solving for, from, for them?

And I understand the talent piece of it, um, like, you know, addressing the kind of talent element of it. But what’s the, what’s the core focus in terms of the problem that you are solving for these law firms?

Hamid Kohan: One of the big differentiation. Been between us and other competitors is that they, we have a lot of in-house legal experts.

Like we have legal masterminds working for us, uh, former COOs of the big firms as part of our organization. So we are not the staffing house. We are sort of market legal services with the legal expertise. Like we coach firms, we coach people within the firms that are not even the attorneys. So that’s one big.

Value add and we, we know how to set up a very effective intake team that does 24 7 bilingual intake. It’s not just providing the people. We are providing the skillset and expertise to make it effective, uh, make it efficient. So that’s one element. The second element is the platform. Let’s say you have five, 10 visual staff with us.

You manage their. Attendance, their time sheet, their incentives, bonuses, commissions, uh, security, everything in the platform. And we have a talent pool that is set up by, agAIn, legal expertise to identify talent candidate who have legal experience in a specific field of law that you work with.

So, let’s say you are a. Uh, like this is like a, a strange case, but I had a class action employment firm in California that does a hundred percent litigation, and they wanted a paralegal, virtual staff who has working class action. I mean, it’s like, I can’t even find one. In the entire Los Angeles that I can select, but we have an inventory of them.

Our talent pool, so our talent pool. When you log in, you search for those terms. I’m an employment firm in California looking for a paralegal with bilingual, and we present the talent. They see the video of the candidate, they can set up interview, they can screen them everything, and then you basically, almost like you’re putting into the shopping cart and we onboard them and then we help you manage ’em because they still remAIn our, so it relieves a lot of pressure, especially with this platform that you have no long-term contract, no, uh, obligation.

We take care of all the benefit. It is a fixed cost. You never have employer employee relationship problems. So, it makes it very scalable. That’s why you can go from one to a hundred really fast.

Bim Dave: Yeah. No, ab absolutely. So, so with, when, when it comes to, well, so when we think about kind of some of those firms that are struggling with scaling, managing some of the overhead of hiring and all the other pieces of puzzle that are associated with growth, um, how, how does Legal Soft help them?

Like you mentioned some of the, the kind of consulting aspect of what you do. I’d love to hear a little bit more about how you support a firm growing, um, from that perspective. Sure.

Hamid Kohan: The first, the first thing that we do, we call the firm evaluation system. So we have, uh, senior practice consultants here, uh, locally that they work with the firm and starting first evaluating the firm.

So, evaluation of the firm starts with like, what’s your structure? Like almost 90% of ’em don’t have a structure. It’s like a bunch of people doing a bunch of work, and there’s a. Managing attorney, you know, so we sAId we need to have an organizational chart, just like any other, doesn’t matter if you have five of you or 500 of you.

We need to have organizational chart. So we help actually develop organization chart that says this is operation, this is pre-lit, this is late. This is accounting and finance and HR. So we lay it out and then we evaluate the kind of cases they have, how many of them they have, and making sure they have enough resources.

Sometimes, like you say, personal injury case manager. the effective number for a case manager and personal injury to be effective is to have between 75 to 85 active cases. Some people have 30, some people have 150. So, we try to adjust it. That’s a consultation comes in. ’cause we know the numbers.

When you work with a thousand firms. You and especially you are inside the firms, you learn a lot like what works, what doesn’t work good, bad, and ugly. Everything is present. So we say, okay, and then we have, uh, like we, when we evaluate the intake team, oh, we have a call center. So my first question or my consultants goes, so you trust your seven eight figure call that you don’t know what time of the day or night weekend comes in to some random stranger sitting somewhere else and only cares about how many minutes they keep you on the phone or the client on the phone and you just lost a seven figure case.

Oh, shoot. I never thought about it that way. Well, it is, that call could come at 11:00 PM Saturday night in some random person call center. Answered it. So we set up a 24 7 in the firm, virtually staffing intakes that cost the, the firm less than like $10,000 a month for full-time, four hours, I mean for staff 24 7.

And they’re trAIned by us and trAIned by the firm, and they incentivize when they actually retAIn a six figure seven figure client. Right. So that’s a big game changer as far as the financial posts and then everything else through the system we do. And then we jump into their online presence. We have a company called, uh, practice Management Solution, or Practice 360.

So, they evaluate your entire online presence. Look, everybody who wants to convert from a lead to a client or refer somebody, your online presence is extremely important. Even with my kids who wanna go to a restaurant, they wanna spend 200 bucks. They go and check out the online presence. You know, it’s like, we gonna go to this place for dinner.

We’ll, we need to see how it is. So anyway, we do the whole online presence as far as websites, social media posts, uh, engagements, uh, monthly. Communication of newsletters, mobile app and all of that. So we take care of their online presence. Um, and these are all separate services from separate companies that is a part of Legal Soft Enterprise.

Then in a sense, last two years, we knew my, originally my, the book I wrote, it says How to Scale Your Stupid Law Firm, sort of created with that process. And then the first change was to take an existing firm that has like. Bunch of people in the office working and make it like half virtual, half in-house.

The next wave that is happening going forward from now is the firm is gonna be divided up into one third in-house, one third virtual, one third AI. So that brought us into. The company we established called Law Practice AI. So this is now for two angles. First of all, trAIning all of our virtual staff in all illegal related AI tools so they don’t confuse, get confused between 500.

AI tools that comes is out and there is a hundred adding every month into it is very, very overwhelming environment. So we are trying to consolidate it, develop what doesn’t exist, bring into the game, what exists, create a complete PI AI platform that does from client generations all the way to settlements and trAIn our virtual staff to use the same tools.

Because somebody gotta trAIn them and it is not easy. So we’re taking that initiative. So we basically took off the staffing problem, online presence problem, and the technology problem to basically make it a 360.

Bim Dave: Yeah. No, that makes total sense. And you touched on a very real issue, um, that a lot of law firms or pretty much any, any business is facing these days is just understanding the value and defining the value and ROI of any of the AI products that are on the market, because there’s just a plethora of them.

What, what, what’s your advice to firms? That are kind of considering jumping on board with, with a new AI product that they’ve kind of been sold the dream of. And how, how do you measure the success of a product, um, that could, could change the dynamic of your law firm?

Hamid Kohan: I would only, uh, me being a tech industry 25 years or whatever and seeing all the changes.

Nothing is like what’s happening with AI. I’ve seen the .com evolution, I’ve done the wireless evolution, all of this stuff. They say AI thing, it’s crazy stuff. Uh, so it is very confusing. I would only jump on the AI platform or service that has a long vision of being a single source AI platform. So for example, if you are using these major CRMs like Clio, file Line, solidify My case and those guys, you want that platform to do everything you want for the CRM, your client management system.

You can’t go get five different softwares to just manage your cases. It needs to be one. Now the same thing applies to AI. The people who come in and say, I have an intake AI, and this one says I have a drafting AI. This one says I have a demand AI. And this one says, I have discovery AI. I mean, it is impossible to one, find the right one, use the right one, train everybody on them, and then not having been connected with each other.

Which is, is a broken piece. So my suggestion is for people who jump into things like, let’s say even up demand, okay, demand is right smack in the middle of the process. So I got that done. What happens to the before and after, you know? Uh, so it needs to be a very 360 solution in the behalf of the, uh, the company.

And that’s why we did that. We started by doing a single sort of a service on law practice that AI, but we found that exact same problem. So we changed it to be a complete 360 1 place, one system with one trAIning for everyone.

Bim Dave: Yeah. No, it makes, makes a lot of sense. So you kind of touched on the fact that you’ve, you’ve seen, um, you know, uh, some of the generational changes that have happened over the, over the.com era now, AI, what w what would you see as, what would you say has changed in terms of your approach to, you know, ma managing, um, an organization like Legal Soft over the, over the years?

Hamid Kohan: I think the, the biggest thing is, um, overcoming the resistance of adopting new things or changing ways with the firm. That’s always been the biggest challenge. The first thing they say is like, we’ve been doing it this way. We’ve been, we’ve been using this thing for like 20 years without changing it. Uh, I don’t need a sort of a workflow automation process because John does this and give it to Julie, and Julie gives it to Mike.

And then, but that’s all things of the past. Uh, so adoption is one thing, being. Open-minded and visionary, go with the flow. Look, these trains are leaving the station. You’re either on it or you’re off it, but the people who are on it get to the destination much faster than you do. So to stay competitive and being efficient, you need to be able to adopt and listen to new ideas and concepts, uh, and take a bit of risk.

Uh, nothing is a hundred percent, you’re gonna have some risk in there. So, um, my big thing with the firm is just, I remember during a .com thing, since you mentioned it, there was like a five thousand .com places were coming up with a single product and single, you know, you buy a shoe here, you buy plate here, you buy cans there, and then Amazon came and said, no, you buy everything here.

Right? So that’s why we all go to Amazon ’cause, you know, everything is in it. If I have to go to 15 different, you know, uh, e-commerce sites. I go crazy and I probably don’t even buy half of this stuff I buy. So the same thing with the AI happens. You gotta be one place. It can be 18 places, but people who are creating them.

Them, because I, yeah, my tech background, the tech guys only try to solve one single problem. So they focus on one thing and they produce it and lay it out. And this past two weeks I had a call. With five different AI companies who, these startups who all just develop one thing, another all stuck because the one thing doesn’t work.

It needs to be multiple things connected to each other. So they were actually having conversations with us for the acquisition of ’em because they added a component to our solution because one-offs doesn’t work anymore.

Bim Dave: Yeah. No, I, I like that. I think the, the ability to be able to kind of zoom out and see the big picture is so key for the future, right.

And being able to connect the dots between the various problems that need to be solved. So I love, I love that. I love that approach.

Hamid Kohan: Right.

Bim Dave: Um, so, so, so in terms, in terms of that, um. The, the, the, the kind of cha one of the key challenges you mentioned, which I think is, is probably has not changed over the years, is, is this cultural barriers to adoption.

Um, whether they be internal, external, um, how are you helping firms overcome them? So, you know, we know the problems there. What are, what are, what are some of the practical things that firms can do or that you are doing with firms to get them past that so they get to a point where they can actually adopt technology at a pace that, that kind of serves the law firm in a positive way.

Hamid Kohan: It would always starts with starting a conversation and starting saying that, yes, I’m interested to, you know, uh, use technology and processes and automation at my firm. I’m open to the conversation. This always starts from having a, you know, open mind to listen, and then once you listen and agree, having a discipline of actually following it to make it happen.

You know, I, I remember, uh, a few years back when, agAIn, when we were doing this expansion, uh, one of the things I will bring up to the firm who wants to expand says, why are we just doing practicing in California? I mean, why Such a major limitation. Imagine I’m coming from tech, which is everything, plant planet based.

It’s like, why don’t we market this in like 50 countries? And now I’m coming here and it says. California only. I’m like, why? So I started putting the notion of multi-state practice, which to agAIn, most of the people was like, what the hell are you talking about? I’m not licensed in Texas and Arizona and so forth.

So I went, did a research, figured out there’s a UBE program, universal Bar Exam, that you take a test in one of these state and all of a sudden you can literally practice in 39 states. Right. So I’m like, okay, now we not stuck into one estate. I can actually take cases in multiple estates officially and handle it, especially when after COVID that nobody even goes to anybody’s office for consultation or So every conference room that I know in every law firm is turning into offices now or lunch rooms.

’cause nobody ever goes there. So they don’t care. You have a office in Texas or not. They just want their case done properly. So that’s another angle when we’re telling them, oh look, you’re not limited to one state that you’re licensing. All it takes is hire somebody from another state that is one of these UBE estate.

Unfortunately, California is not a UB estate, but there’s 39 of them.

Bim Dave: Yeah. Yeah. No, may may as well use that to your advantage. Right. Does that makes

Hamid Kohan: sense? Absolutely. It’s almost like, uh, getting a business license into, you know, New York. Okay. Get a business license. You can operate a business.

Bim Dave: Yes. Yes, indeed.

So, so I, I, I, I remember taking a look at your, your website and, and some of the, one of the things that stood out to me was some of the client success stories, um, that, that you’ve had. So you’ve, you’ve obviously partnered with many law firms over the years, um, helping them with various. Various solutions.

Are there any success stories that kind of stand out in your mind as to ones where you feel like really proud that, you know, we, you, we partnered with a affirm and you kind of helped them, um, turn the business around, uh, or, or significantly improve what they do?

Hamid Kohan: Sure, definitely. Um, there was a firm in California that, um, two young gentlemen started it and, um, I got involved with them and they were talking about their logo, what the logo should look like.

’cause they were young and they were just like, we started with the name and the logo. And so we did that. And then, um, uh, they started completely following the recipe and instructions. They were in the consumer protection, uh, market and personal injury boat, uh, two practice types. Uh, during the past five years, they went from two people firm to 350 people firm, and they basically dominated the market.

Uh, and they do it all with, following the recipe. AgAIn, it goes back to virtual staffing. They have 139 virtual staff. They have completely automated the CRM system. They choose the right CRM. They automated the heck out of it. I made them invest a lot of money on. Customizing the CRM that they licensed, you know, from one of those top three.

But not just buying it for the sake of buying the CRM. Make it customizable. That works for your firm. I mean your people. And they’re following the same discipline about marketing, getting referrals. Lot of people have a still a hangup about getting a referral and giving a referral fee. I’m like, why? I mean, you make money 15 different ways.

I always use the example of when you walk into a target and they have a gum in the front that they sell for 99 cents. They probably make a penny on it all the way to the, you know, flat screen tv. In the end it says 3000. They make $700, but they set ’em all ’cause they make money off of everything. So. Creating a major referral program for them to get referral cases, hundreds and hundreds of ’em a month. At some point, they were getting like seven, 800 cases a month from referral only. You know, it’s huge. A lot of people are close-minded about that. It’s, I don’t want to give it 30, 40% of my fee to John.

Why not? You made 60%, he made 40% whatever. Still money, you know? So there’s a lot of those things. Those success stories has to do with the people who have, who adopt well, have instructions, follow it, and they have a discipline.

Bim Dave: Yep. So, so if I’m, if I’m a, a, a, you know, a, a small law firm or midsize law firm listening today, and I’m considering taking the step into, you know, having, um, some, some level of growth of my team through virtual staffing using your platform, what would be your advice to get them started?

Like what the things that they should be. Preparing for watching out for in terms of how they make that successful?

Hamid Kohan: Sure. Everything starts with that initial conversation with our practice experts here, and it’s all basically, there’s no fees or charges or anything for this stuff. So if they start with a consultation that we can evaluate the firm’s core and the status.

Then also how ambitious they wanna be. You know, attorneys go from very passive to very aggressive. So the, the, the plan has to be fitting their lifestyle, you know, this work life balance thing that going on. Nowadays, uh, I got two kids in law, so I know it is like, there’s some who don’t care. They wanna make a lot of money, wanna work seven days a week, and there’s a bunch who wanna be a nine to fives.

So, once we figure out the DNA of the firm. And what’s where they wanna go, how fast. Then we customize a solution for them. It is not one size fit all. We have to customize it. And agAIn, they get all of that expertise, directions and information at no cost. So you got nothing to lose. They get that for staffing.

They get F for marketing, they get that for technology and AI. You get the whole thing and there’s no cost associated to it.

Bim Dave: And then, and then once they’re up and running, so once, once they’ve got your platform in place and they’re using your, um, solutions to do things like some of the time tracking, billing, et cetera, that, that you mentioned, how, how off, like how long does that take, like how long does that process takes?

If I’m a firm coming to you today and I want to get started, what’s the typical kind of startup time to start seeing?

Hamid Kohan: In about two weeks, they get onboarded, uh, with the platform and the staff in two weeks. So you have your first staff deployed at your firm in. Two weeks or less. And then from that point on, you’re being contacted weekly, monthly, whatever with our, you know, team of experts to see what’s next and how to manage the one that you got, the platform and so forth.

Introduce you into the marketing services and the AI services and so forth. So we basically adopt our retention rate with the law firms is 93%. So, uh, that’s a number I always drive by. Is that if they didn’t see a value, they wouldn’t stick around. They go hire their own people, do their own thing. But with 93% retention rate of the firms, uh, I think it gives me a lot of confidence in our service and, and the quality that we bring in.

Bim Dave: Mm. Yeah. No, that’s amazing. That’s an amazing, amazing stat. And so, so when you are, when you’re working with these firms and they’re kind of up and running and they’re, they’re starting to see growth, um, you know, using this, this method of, of delivery, how I, is there a balance to be had between, you know, how fast you grow and how fast you scale and mAIntAIn mAIntAIning quality of service and how, how do you manage that piece of it?

Hamid Kohan: Well it is, is that constant checking up and evaluating the growth and the quality. You know, sometimes we even tell our, uh, our clients. For the next 90 days, don’t hire anybody more, even though it comes from us. We sAId, don’t you need to get this thing up and running with your existing team and cases and so forth, and then we come back reevaluate.

We, even when the, uh, mutual staff are not performing, we are the one going to them and say, I need to replace this person for you. We don’t think that the quality or the quantity of the service is efficient. So we are very much driven on the, the quality of service that we provide, and longevity of the relationship.

You know, we are looking at it in a very long term basis, so we get very involved in the firms that way.

Bim Dave: Yeah. Very, very good. Good to hear. So what, what’s next for legal software? Are there new, um, you know, features, product areas that you’re looking at, new practice areas or any innovations that you’re kind of looking at in the near term?

Hamid Kohan: Sure. Every year we add an a visual staff skillset to the game. Like this year we introduced, uh. Law firm bookkeeping, uh, staff, both part-time and full-time, which basically means all of the payroll processing, account payable, receivable, they know how to deal with the trust account and ITO account and doing all of that.

So, we started from like one or two positions. Now we have like. Eight or nine positions that covers the entire firm from one end to another. So innovation in the way of a technology. So we’re using tons of AIs to qualify candidates and place them into our talent pool. Uh, how to screen them, how to qualify ’em, how to tag ’em, and then how to manage them efficiently.

Those are the new things. And also adding in new, uh, positions. So that’s on that side. On the AI side, oh God, it’s like. 15 different, uh, AI initiatives to be able to complete the puzzle. So the firm can use one AI platform for everything they need. Uh, and even with, if we don’t make it in-house, we license and integrate it into the platform.

Bim Dave: And on, on that AI front, how do you see things in future in terms of, obviously there’s a lot of, um. Focus on agentic AI, um, really replacing certAIn functions within a law firm. Right. In terms, in terms of some of the low level duties at least, but maybe scaling up to others, especially when you introduced AI avatars and things like that.

Um, how, how far do you think it goes and, and how quickly do you think firms need to think about in the

Hamid Kohan: transactional law? It pretty much goes from one end to another, because in transactional law, we actually completed a project for a client in the immigration with the AI. Does a complete intake suggests the Visa type.

Collects all the documentation, reads it, analyzes and gives them feedback. Fills out all the application forms, attaches all the supporting documents, submits it to, uh, immigration office, so. No lawyering whatsoever from one end to another. Obviously the attorney sees it and reviews it and so forth. I’m not dismissing that, but every position that he had from the intake all the way to paralegal is gone on the, uh, contingency and litigation ones.

AgAIn, it’s gonna enhance or reduces the cost on intake. Document collection. Document summary. Um. Like you’re doing a deposition prep or you’re doing a discovery, A discovery summary, emotions, uh. Uh, calendaring, all of that stuff gonna be AI. There’s still people needed and involved there, just reduces the need of the so much people to be involved.

So, I’m not saying it’s gonna wipe out, you know, the whole firm staff, just like I did with the virtual staffing. I didn’t say fire everybody you have in the office, and I get you a ritual staff. I sAId, if you have it. Pre manager who has nine case managers, you can reduce that to four and add four mutual case manager assistance and save 20,000 a month.

So, it’s the same thing now with AI.

Bim Dave: Yeah. No, it makes, makes total sense. I’m, I’m keen to know, Hamid, what keeps you motivated personally? Like you’ve been doing this for obviously a number of years now, um, looking in the tech space and, and legal, what can, what’s the vision that continues to drive you forward

Hamid Kohan: optimizations and creativity on, um.

That is, I thought for example, about a year and a half ago or whatever it was like, okay, so visual staffing has as much evolution that we’re gonna bring into this running a law practice, right? And we were sort of like cruising with that idea and this, this whole AI tech happen and it sort of like made everything else sort of obsolete and it just like, and it’s moved so fast and so creative that I, I get up at 3:00 AM.

I start banging on the keyboard like I used to do in the tech days. It’s like, we need to do this, we need to do that, we need to figure this out. We need to figure that out. So for a while, there’s gonna be that merger that I mentioned about, you know, one third virtual, one third in-office, one third, AI fully implemented, integrated, and connected together to be able to run the most effective, efficient law practice.

Um, that’s on and that’s all on the plAIntiff side. We haven’t even covered the defense side, which is a much bigger piece. And, um, you know, how do you, you know, all the big laws are getting affected with like, how do you do a billable hour with the AI? You know, it is like you use the AI to do, you know. But it would typically take you eight hours to do.

You just did it with AI. I’m not letting you charge me for eight hour billable hours because I know you use AI. So now there are actually big, big companies are sending official letters to their defense firms and telling them, if you’re doing this following functions with AI, we are not accepting billable hours anymore.

So.

Bim Dave: Yeah. Yeah. No, I’m, I’m, he, I’m, I’m also hearing a lot of firms thinking about their pricing models and pricing strategies around, uh, some of the ways that they kind of sell, sell these services. Because, like you sAId, I think fundamentally there’s, there’s, they have to charge for it because there’s an investment in the technology at the end of the day, and the subscriptions that you pay for.

Um, but, but it doesn’t equate to an hour. Right? It’s, it’s, it’s more of kind of a fixed fee, um, re uh, relationship potentially. Yeah. Or, or some other, some other kind of pricing model.

You know, something like that is, uh, but it’s not gonna be all billable hours.

Bim Dave: Exactly. Yes. Yes. Well, it’s gonna be exciting to see it all unravel over, over the years ahead and I’m sure, sure there’s gonna be some exciting times for, you know, technology people like yourself to bring, you know, new solutions to, to the mix.

So, we look forward to seeing that. Um, Hamid, I want to just move to some, some wrap up cup. Couple of wrap up questions if I may. The first of which being, um, if you could go back to yourself at age 18, what advice would you give yourself?

Hamid Kohan: Uh, I probably stay in Silicon Valley. I move away. I, uh, moved after 20 years, but I, if I would’ve stayed, uh, longer, I probably have a.

Even a more successful, uh, career and probably easier life moving to Los Angeles is not the thing.

Bim Dave: Excellent. Excellent. And, and what, what’s your favorite travel destination?

Hamid Kohan: Favorite travel destination? The ly

Bim Dave: Okay. Lovely.

Hamid Kohan: Even though it’s a small place a lot of people get bored at, I, I can hang in there for a bit.

Bim Dave: Hmm. Good, good, good choice. Um, and finally, Hamed, if there’s one message that you hope our legal audience take away today after listening to, to your kind of story and, and your message about legals sot, what would that be?

Hamid Kohan: Um, be open-minded, take a better risk, have a plan and a discipline to execute it. So, because I see a lot of, um, attorneys come here, agree, wanna do it, and then they go home and it goes away. Is uh, having the discipline to implement the plan that you have already decided that it’s gonna help you and your firm and actually do it.

Bim Dave: Excellent. Fantastic advice. Hammi, I really appreciate you taking time out to talk to me today. It’s been a pleasure having you on the show.

Hamid Kohan: Thank you. Same here. Thank you for the invite. Appreciate it.

Bim Dave: Thank you, hammed.