TLH Ep. 33 Elisabet Hardy, Chief Product Officer discusses the legal technology landscape and Elite’s product vision
Hello, Legal Helm listeners! Today, we?re thrilled to welcome Elisabet Hardy, Chief Product Officer at Elite.
As a leader in legal technology, Elite provides cutting-edge financial management and business solutions for law firms across the globe. Elisabet oversees the strategy and development of key products like 3E, ProLaw, eBilling Hub, and Mattersphere. With more than 25 years of experience in product management and marketing, she?s built and led high-performing teams at Elite, Thomson Reuters, and beyond.
In today?s episode, we?ll explore the evolving landscape of legal tech and Elite?s vision for the future. Elisabet, welcome to the show!
Your host
Bim Dave is Helm360?s Executive Vice President. 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.
Our Guest
Elisabet Hardy is the Chief Product Officer for Elite globally and leads the overall product strategy and vision, product roadmap, and new product development. The Elite product portfolio includes the industry leading solutions of 3E, ProLaw, eBillingHub, and MatterSphere.
Elisabet has 25+ years of experience building top-performing product and product marketing teams for software companies. Prior to joining Elite, Elisabet was Vice President of Product Management at Thomson Reuters, responsible for the legal tech and Elite products. She?s held several product leadership roles including Vice President of Product Management & Product Marketing at Approva Corporation (now part of INFOR). In this role, she was responsible for developing the product vision, go-to market strategy, and roadmaps for Approva?s risk and financial management platforms. Elisabet also has expansive experience in the ERP market from holding various software development and product management leadership roles at organizations like Sage Software.
Elisabet earned a bachelor?s degree in business administration from Villanova University in Villanova, Pennsylvania.
Transcript
Bim Dave: Hello, Legal Helm listeners. Today, I am excited and delighted to be speaking with Elisabet Hardy, Chief Product Officer at Elite, a legal technology company that provides leading financial management and business operations solutions to law firms all around the world.
Elisabet leads the global product strategy and development for a portfolio that includes top legal tech solutions like 3E, ProLaw, eBilling Hub, and Mattersphere. With over 25 years of experience in product and product marketing, Elisabet has built high performing teams at Elite, Thomson Reuters, and others.
Today we’ll be talking about the legal technology landscape and Elite’s product vision for the legal market.
Elisabet, hello and welcome to the show.
Elisabet Hardy: Thank you, Bim. It’s great to be here. It’s, uh, it’s my first debut on your podcast. So, I’m excited to spend some time with you today.
Bim Dave: Likewise, I’m very happy that you’re here.
So, for those of you that don’t know, Elisabet and I first met, and I was trying to remember the first time we actually met, I think it was 2011 if I’m not mistaken in the Elite LA office when I think you joined Elite at that time.
And I still remember you walking into the room and hearing about your product vision for the first time.
It was a really exciting time you kind of bought a whole different dynamic to the Elite portfolio and that was a really exciting time for Elite because we were kind of transitioning from the Elite enterprise world into Elite 3E at that time, and a lot has happened since then.
So, it’s very exciting to have you on the show because obviously there’s a lot of a lot of history and I’ve kind of seen the journey that you’ve kind of gone on for more than a decade.
It must be now with the Elite product portfolio so I’d love for you to tell our audience a little bit about firstly, the journey that led you to Elite and how you got into the product management field.
Elisabet Hardy: Absolutely. And thank you for dating me there as well. You know, I was just with a customer yesterday and everyone was going around the virtual table doing their introductions, how many years they’ve been. And I have decided to cap my experience at a 10 plus with Elite, because I think as I add years, it’s just, it’s just a reminder of how fast it’s gone, and the age are adding to all of us, but it’s been, it’s been really exciting.
And I think when I first joined Elite. I remember meeting you and some of the other team in our office there at the time, which was in Culver City area and thinking, wow, what a, what a talented team. But what an opportunity at hand here, because if you remember back in those days, we were very? very early on to even talk about technology and cloud wasn’t even on the on the docket.
And I remember having conversations around delivering capabilities on mobile devices, which was a brand-new thing in the legal industry at the time. So, what really attracted me to the legal industry, and then obviously joining Elite specifically was I just saw such a wide and deep opportunity for innovation, really bringing technology to the forefront of helping law firms reach that next level of how they operate, where they gain efficiencies, use technology to be better at what they do and how they ultimately serve their customers.
And I think as we fast forward to where we are today, I’m not sure anyone could have expected how fast it’s gone the path, especially the past couple of years from when we started back, which is now for me, almost like you said, 13 years ago. So, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s great and it’s good that there’s still so many familiar faces, even though if new people have come into the industry, which I think is a, is a good thing.
There?re still some familiar faces around there, both in other. Tech vendor organizations, uh, as well as customers and Elite employees that have joined law firms to work and Elite employees like yourself that have started up their own outfits and organizations that we can partner.
Bim Dave: Yeah. no, absolutely. It’s, it’s very interesting when we bump into people within the legal industry and it is like a family, right? It’s like having an extended family where we kind of all, uh, a lot of us know each other and, and have a lot of history, so it’s kind of a nice place to be because both combined with kind of the partner ecosystem, vendor ecosystem with integrated products and customers, you know, it does become a nice place to, to be, and we must like something about it because we’re still here many years later, right?
Elisabet Hardy: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s right. And as you know, Bim, we’ve been on a journey with Elite as well over the past 13 years where Elite for the most part in the beginning when I joined even though it was part of Thompson Reuters, it was run fairly independently at that time.
And it was an exciting part of our history because we were starting to build that comprehensive platform strategy which we didn’t have before. I think today we’re living that platform strategy, which is very obviously rewarding and exciting to have been part of and as we merged Elite more and more into Thompson Reuters, I think we got an opportunity to take advantage of what that had to offer with building integrations to products that we still have today that I think are important, like IQ, for example.
And then fast forward to where we are today as we turn into 2025, we will be inching closer and closer to almost 2 years of being an independently operating company again.
So, it’s, uh, it’s been,
Bim Dave: Yeah, indeed. And exciting to see what happens in, in the future. So, so since 3E launched, the legal technology landscape has changed pretty significantly. And I think you, you kind of alluded to this earlier that, you know last couple of years indeed have been very busy and there’s been a lot going on. What are some of the trends and innovations that you’ve observed in the market and have any of those come as a surprise to you?
Elisabet Hardy: Yeah, I mean, I think there are, there are a lot of trends. I think both macro trends of sort of the pressure that law firms are feeling that I think are not unlike any other industry around profitability, gaining efficiencies. And I think the competition as a, as a, is at an all-time high for the legal industry and having pressures from new legal vendors coming in alternative legal practices.
Vendors coming into the space has certainly changed that when that happened a few years ago, we have law firms that are in some parts of the world, public entities, or owned by private equity. And that sort of changes the way that they have to operate and think about, I think, a particular profitability and margin pressures.
But I think outside of sort of thinking about the macro trends, I think, to me, what has stood out over the last. I’d say 12 to 16 months is the notion around digital transformation is very much at the forefront of what firms are either putting plans around or starting to execute against a plan to get to a point where they reach digital transformation between.
Moving their applications to the cloud, taking advantage of technology in a very, very different way than I’ve seen before. And as I think back to some things that have surprised me this year and I was sort of thinking through what we might talk about this morning, I think to the ILTA conference that we were all at this year.
And I think there was 2 things that stuck out to me that sort of surprised me 1 being. Over the past few years being at ILTA, the conversations have been around I think if, if, if we are moving to the cloud, which then move to when we are moving to the cloud, but this year, there was a very, very different conversation and it was really how fast can I migrate to the cloud?
I have started with some of my applications and my P. M. S. My financial system is that last piece and now it’s about how fast can I actually get there so that I can start to take advantage of new technologies in ways that I can’t today simply from operating on Prem. So, so that surprised me that we’ve gone from if to when to how fast.
That, that sort of was a surprising part of, I think, the conversations that we had with so many technology providers and, uh, tech leaders, uh, out of the legal vertical, uh, at ILTA. And then I think the second piece, and we’re a few minutes in now, so I think it’s okay for me to mention this word, which has become, I think, the buzzword of, of 24, uh, which is AI and, uh, I don’t know if you were in that vendor hall at ILTA, Uh, you saw almost, I think, every company.
That was there had something about AI on their billboards or in their marketing materials. And that conversation has really moved rapidly. , I don’t think it’s surprising, but I think the surprising pieces, I don’t think necessarily that we have seen all the level of AI conversation, uh, which I’m sure we’ll, we’ll dive in to here, uh, in a little bit, but that was another part that I think, wow, it’s, it’s, it’s not only here, but it’s here with sort of a vengeance.
It’s, it’s, it’s definitely the big topic I think of the year. And then the last piece I will probably say which has surprised me, I guess a little bit is how ready Our customers are to really focus in on scaling their operations, and it really doesn’t matter whether a firm is large, global, or mid size, smaller, just operating in 1 jurisdiction.
This whole notion of scaling operations, I think is going to be something as we look into 2025 and beyond is going to be the topic that we spend more time on than. Let’s get to the cloud. That’s just one. It’s just one step of the journey. And we’re starting to have the conversations much, much more about the scale of my operations.
Where can I leverage what I have today? What I will have tomorrow to get to get that scale. And I think that comes to some of the macro pressures that firms are.
Bim Dave: Yeah, I think you make a really good point about the kind of change and shift in mindset around how fast a firm is now willing to kind of consider moving to the cloud. And actually, a lot of the conversations that we at Helm 360 have been having with, you know, existing customers on the 3D platform that might be on prem today really do align with what you’ve just said.
And, I was having a conversation with a customer recently, and one of the driving forces for them making a decision was the fact that they had to basically plan for a big hardware refresh on prem, and they’re weighing up the cost of that versus actually does it now make sense to move to cloud and not have to worry about that in future because just the fact that they have to do that every few years is a big intensive exercise.
There’s resource that has to be allocated to that to make sure that They get it right., and then there’s the whole logistics of actually getting into a data center, securing it, and all of the other pieces of the puzzle. So, so that, so that seems like one, one, one of the driving factors. Are there other, other factors that you’re seeing that are kind of influencing a firm’s decision to say, actually let’s, let’s try and move faster?
Elisabet Hardy: Yeah, I mean, I think I think you bring up a good point. I think there’s so many firms that are facing those really expensive hardware refreshes. And the question being is the time. Time to, to, to think about things differently. And, and I think that’s where the speed comes up because those hardware refreshes, as you know, they come with a deadline and the deadline is, is what it is.
And that’s what they’re up against. But I think the other things that are sort of speeding up and kind of getting back to that comment that I made about, it’s about how, how fast can you get me there? I think it’s the notion of just realizing that certain types of advancements and technology. Can’t be leveraged on prem.
And I think there’s this notion of. How long can we afford to wait before we take advantage of things like AI, machine learning, or even just connecting and extending experiences into other types of software vehicles or applications that end users are using? And I had a really, really good conversation just the other day with one of our longstanding partners.
And while they are up against a hardware refresh, just like you said, the other notion is, how far behind are we going to fall if we wait? , and it’s not just about, you Like I said, getting to the cloud, it’s about we can’t take advantage of some of these new innovations because they’re simply not being published, uh, to the on-prem versions of, of software any anymore or never probably will.
So, I think that’s the other thing that’s, that’s, that’s driving that speed., and then I think the third part. How many more upgrades are you going to invest in on prem? they’re, they’re not cheap., they are time consuming. , they take up, uh, effort from a firm’s, uh, capacity perspective.
So, we have a lot of customers., and I think this happened, uh, a lot this year that had started for us an on prem upgrade, uh, for 3E and sort of quarter through that process, just stopping that and saying. Why are we doing this when in a year we might just be doing another move to move to the cloud? Why don’t we just do it now? and skip having to do multiple hops and multiple steps to get there or get ourselves into some sort of a hybrid situation, which, I don’t think it’s preferred either, uh, anymore by customers uh, that we speak to.
So, I think it’s those vectors that are driving it. But I think at the heart of it is, I think we’re finally there where digital transformation is, is a real thing for firms. And I think you’ve probably seen this as well. I’m curious on the conversations that you have, but we still have. C level CIOs and CTOs that are, that are being tasked with transforming the firm and innovation officers that are joining firms to really drive change., and I think that’s, uh, that’s helping accelerate the
Bim Dave: Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think that’s, I think that’s also a big driving force because I think when, when firms are kind of looking at the technology stack as a whole, right? , obviously Elite being a significant part of it, but there’s a lot of other systems that are interconnected to, to that. , and I think previously, What firms have been doing over the last few years is thinking about how do we move some of those systems that maybe sit on the side that maybe have a lot less exposure to the cloud, but actually that really then becomes a little bit of a challenge when you don’t really think about a cloud first approach to the other core systems like Elite 3e because the topic of then, you know, integration and how you integrate those cloud systems together becomes a little bit more challenging because now you’ve got a hybrid environment. , and actually it’s, it’s, it’s a lot easier to kind of connect the dots between cloud systems and maybe bringing stuff on prem and, and in the cloud.
So, yeah, really, really great points. I just want to kind of touch a little bit around security as well, because I think some of the conversations that we have also drive around, like, is it more, is it more secure for me to move? My system into the cloud or not, and I’d love to hear your view on how you kind of tackle that conversation with customers that might be in a little doubt right about how much more secure or less secure is moving their system to the cloud. But I
Elisabet Hardy: won’t be surprised by hearing me say that. Yes, it is more secure to have your system in the cloud. And I think from an Elite perspective, we’ve chosen Microsoft as our partner to build our technology on top of their cloud infrastructure, building Azure and taking advantage of what they are doing with their cloud platform.
And, but I think though, one, one thing that I think is, is sort of interesting is, yes, we are having security conversations, but not the same way as we did a couple years ago. When I think really there was this notion that we can protect, we can protect our systems, and ultimately, it’s really about protecting your customer’s data.
Uh, or the law firm’s customer’s data that is, I think we were having much more intense security conversations a couple years ago. Whereas today, I think the understanding is so much more mature around what are the security protocols that come with being in the cloud. And then I think there is a general acceptance by most CIOs and CTOs across law firms today that we cannot possibly keep up with and invest the same amount.
In our security infrastructure as Microsoft can. I mean, if you look at the sheer numbers, that that that sort of instantly make makes sense., that is what they’re thinking about., every single day as they wake up, they have thousands of thousands of people that are working on how to. How to break that next saying they have a lot of blue team red team.
They’re constantly thinking about intrusion and what could be the next potential security breach issue that they need to address way before way before it happens. Right? So, I think we’re. I think I think we’re there in a very much more of a mature security conversation today than maybe a few years ago when I think there were a lot more issues around or questions around it that I think primarily when we speak to our customers were driven by their clients saying we have certain restrictions and requirements before we want you to put our data, uh, into the cloud.
But I think too we’re, we’re very fortunate to have a really strong relationship with Microsoft and being able to really have a hand in hand working relationship with them to make sure that we invest in our applications the right way and focus on security the right way when it comes to how we protect data.
How we protect integrations when data is moving, or if the data is at rest, how we make sure that we have the right disaster recovery policies and that we keep not only do we keep what Microsoft States with Azure, but on top of that, we’re putting additional requirements around how we operate and how we support our customers.
But security is always going to be a top item to. Invest in to think about to work with., but I think that that partnership that we have with Microsoft and what we selected way back when to build our software on top of, I think, was the right decision. And I think a decision that’s being well received by our customers.
Bim Dave: Yeah, no, I agree. I was talking to again, talking to a customer recently about security. And one of the things I asked him to do is go to the Microsoft website and go and have a look at the compliance page for Azure. And you can I mean, you its mind blowing as to how many certifications they have for the platform, but it kind of gives you that comfort level that actually. The processes are very, very well thought out in terms of making sure that they’re adhering to, you know, not just their own standards, but, you know, well recognized standards like SOC 2, like GDPR compliance, like they’ve really thought about it and invested a lot of time and energy in making sure that the certifications are there.
So, I think that that, that makes a lot of sense to firms who, who are concerned about security. So great, great to hear that.
Elisabet Hardy: Yeah, and I think that I think that this is this isn’t this is an important point, especially as I think firms, like you said, and you alluded to that there’s a, There’s a variety of applications and a variety of things that firms are doing on prem today some done with all the right intentions in mind, but maybe not executed in the best way possible to keep those touch points and those integrations secure, making sure that it’s not just the data in your, in your, in your FMS that needs to be secure.
It’s all the gateways in and out that need to be secure as well. Which is why I think when firms think about what do I want to keep. In my tech stack as I move to the cloud is another really important part of the process because we have lived in an on prem world for so long where firms have allowed for, for whatever reason, different areas of different practice areas to, to make their own selections of their own little tools, their own little applications that they’re using to run their book of business.
And I think when you move to the cloud, you just have to be. Very diligent, I think, especially if you’re the, the, the, the person in the firm, that’s waking up thinking about the tech stack and what’s the future of the tech stack that we need. I think that there is a process to go through and really consider carefully.
How do you consolidate more? How do you pick them? How do you pick the partners and the providers that are really going to be able to support you in the long haul that are going to be able to scale? With security with performance with operations, and I think we’re going to see a shift in in in some of that as well as we move forward because it’s not realistic to move every single small application that may or may not comply with certain types of security and cloud requirements.
In your digital transformation, when you do that, so that’s another thing that I think. Really putting that security lens on it, really thinking about what makes sense and what’s going to scale for me in.
Bim Dave: Yeah, absolutely. So, so if I’m a firm that’s on prem at the moment, I have 3E on prem and I’m thinking about moving to cloud, how easy is that transition for a firm considering that they may have done some customization to the product over the years? Like some of them may have been on the platform for a number of years., how, how easy is that transition?
Elisabet Hardy: Yeah, I mean, I think it is, it is, it is a process that each firm and each organization has to go through and it starts with preparedness. , so we work with and, and, and we’re grateful to have our partnership with, with Helm 360 to, to do this as well as you being 1 of our premier delivery partners where I think it’s about preparedness and having a, Good amount of processes that you can go through to really evaluate what have we done in the past?
Because as, as we all know, some of these systems have been implemented for a long time. People have come and gone. So, it’s very hard to know. Is this a customization being this a standard functionality? What did we do here? Some of it is maybe documented. Some of it may be not some of it. The firm did themselves.
Some may have been done by a third party. Some may have been done by Elite in the past., so we have a, I think we have a very, very well thought through process that we take customers through where we start with that assessment of What does your environment look like? We have a lot of tools that we run through to really, assess the environment and what may have been done.
And then in those assessment reports that we deliver and that we walk our clients through, we talk through and we highlight the things that are perfectly fine, may have been a customization that That they’ve done that. That’s perfectly fine to have in the cloud. And then there are those things that they may have done where they haven’t done an upgrade in 3 to 5 years, and they did a customization.
But now we have standard functionality. So why carry that with you when you go into the cloud? Let’s replace that with standard capabilities and standard functions. And then there are those sorts of sins of the past that have been done, where you may not have followed full protocol in how you did a customization. So that has to be. Uh, reconsidered because we. Have a responsibility as, as, as a law firm’s partner, when we take responsibility for your system that it is going to be performance that is going to scale that it’s going to be secure. So, we take that obviously very, very seriously. And then I think the largest area that we walk our customers through is what types of integrations have you done?
Because on prem, most of them were probably. System to system or database to database directly. And a ton of SQL scripts probably running, uh, touching your operational system, your production system, which. Whether you’re on prem or in the cloud, it’s just not it’s just not a good habit anyways. So, we spend a lot of time talking to our customers about how to replace those with API integrations and out of the box configurable integrations that that that we’ve already built.
Uh, to speed up the process for our customers. So that’s how we start. And then as we go through it, it can be a very quick process, quite frankly, to go from, from on prem to the cloud. I mean, we’re doing these now in as little as six months. Uh, it can be less than that., it depends, uh, on each client and each, uh, firm’s setup, uh, which can be, uh, varied, uh, from, from firm to firm, but it’s, it’s not, it’s not a very onerous process, quite frankly.
I think it’s just about. Preparedness and making sure that we’re all on the same page., as we start the journey.
Bim Dave: Great. And, uh, can we dive a little bit deeper into extendibility? So, you kind of touched on APIs. I’m interested to hear what you, what the vision is for the future in terms of developing those out further, allowing further integrations with for, for firms to be able to do more with the platform. but, but also just kind of touching on what you said earlier around. There are things that you can’t, that you just can’t do in the same way that you can do on prem versus cloud, right? So, looking at your data SQL day, it might be a good, good example of that., I’m very keen to kind of learn a little bit more about the integration strategy and how you’re leveraging solutions like, uh, Power Platform, like Power platform and power platform functionality to enable customers to still have really the power to be able to do things that maybe they think that they can’t in cloud.
Elisabet Hardy: Yeah. And it?s a, it’s a, it’s a very timely conversation and question actually, because as we look back on what we have done and what we have invested in, I think we did, we did what had to be done, which. It was building APIs around our platform, which we did not have some years ago. So, we started that several years.
And, uh, we now have a rich library of, of APIs that allow you to both read and write and get data out of the system, which is probably one of the most common questions we get. Well, how can I get data streaming out of your platform into some other place that I have maybe, uh, A data warehouse or data lake or some other 3rd party that you want to get data from your cloud application or your cloud platform, uh, into so that’s always been part of our investment strategy and continues to be part of our investment strategy to make sure that we have.
Rich APIs that are well documented that can be used to scale and leverage for, for all the different third parties and or the firm themselves. But that’s really just 1 part of what we’re doing from a platform perspective when it comes to being open and, and being connected the, the, the 2nd piece, which I think is probably a little bit more of the, the interesting part from.
What can be done using these APIs, which is really to extend the experience from three E into other applications. So, what we’ve done is we have leveraged the Microsoft power platform quite heavily to allow our customers to use our APIs to extend into the Microsoft power platform to either build.
Workflows using low code, no code, uh, which is very easy to do doesn’t require you to be, uh, an engineer or developer. And, uh, most importantly, doesn’t require you to have deep, deep knowledge necessarily of the 3E database structure, which I think is another bonus about using and leveraging APIs to extend the experience, especially taking advantage of what you can do, uh, and, and, and power platform.
We’ve also built a connector, uh, to the power platform, uh, itself, uh, that really speeds up that process and gives customers a starting point of what they can do. And I think the benefits here that we’re seeing is, and I think this is where we will end up, uh, in, in the very near future is. It’s not about what capabilities you can access by logging in all the time to, to an application like 3E, but what capabilities do you want to place in front of customers, in front of end users in a setting where they already exist today?
So, if we think of Microsoft Teams, we think of different collaboration tools that are now. Fairly widely used by all of our customers. There’s no reason why a fee earner has to log in to our financial system in order to get an update or report or get a question answered of. What are all my outstanding time cards that I haven’t completed yet?
Uh, what are my billable hours for this particular client of mine? you should be able to just pop those questions very easily into a team’s chat and be able to get that delivered right inside of the team’s, uh, collaboration tool. So, I think when we think about extensibility, it’s about being able to take and take advantage of.
The rich data that sits in, in, in a product like 3E, the rich capabilities and actions that you can take inside of workflows, wherever you happen to be to, to do your, to do your job. And I think that becomes increasingly important as we think of efficiency. For lawyers, because at the end of the day, there isn’t a single firm who wants lawyers to do and spend more time on administrative tasks.
You know, that’s not really what’s bringing in the money to the firm or creating value for the farm. So, the more that we can do to use extensibility to really serve up those capabilities and or insight into. All that rich data in an easy, understandable way, wherever you are operating. I think that’s the, that’s the exciting point about where we are with our platform.
And that’s some of the things that we’re working with, uh, closely with our customers today is to get those capabilities, right. Delivered into their, into their hands.
Bim Dave: No, that’s good. Good to hear. And how does that play out into the future of 3E from a platform perspective? So, what, what kind of things can we expect to see from Elite in 2025 that, that’s that’s getting you excited in terms of product enhancements and features that might, that you might be able to disclose today, if I can put you on the spot.
Elisabet Hardy: Yes, so you heard it here first. You heard it here first of what’s coming. So, I think we’ve touched on a couple of things that are always going to be part of what we invest in. It’s going to be security, getting migrations to be fast and smooth and as, least cumbersome as possible for, for, for the firm so that we can, we can get them to that destination quickly, which then turns into the exciting parts of what we are doing next that firms can take advantage of.
And I’m very excited as we turn the corner into 2025, and we look at what we can do to automate, Manual tasks and error prone tasks or jobs, quite frankly, that are just too big for any humans to do in a, in a, in a period of time. That’s acceptable to, to complete those jobs. So, we have, and you will see this and we’ll, we’ll have some more announcements on this in the early.
Parts of 2025, but we have taken what I think is a maybe slightly different approach to how we’re leveraging AI than what, than what I’ve seen, uh, from some other platforms in the, in the market that we have gone through in a very thoughtful way, looking at the business processes that fly, that, that, that, that move through in, in the 3E and e billing hub platform.
And staked out where we think we can use modern technology to either eliminate a task that you don’t have to do anymore, speed up that task, or get you to the point where you can get different. intelligence delivered into your workflows in a new way that you didn’t have before. So, I think what you’re going to see from us is a very rapid pace of innovation, uh, as we move into 2025.
And a lot of that is going to be focused around AI agents that can take over some of the jobs. That you have to do running your operations today. You’re going to see us leveraging AI to bring new intelligence into workflows. And I think we’re going to have a dare I say it’s going to be very excited.
I’m trying not to get out too, too ahead of our announcements here. Our, my, my marketing team won’t be very excited. , if, if I do, but for those of you who are listening, I would say tune in, tune in, tune into us and in January, uh, timeframe, and you will hear about Some of the new, I think, capabilities that we have a leveraging AI that I think is going to really help enhance the entire work to cash workflow, uh, that we think is sort of ripe for, uh, disruption, uh, when it comes to, uh, leveraging innovative technology.
And the firms that we’ve, uh, showcased some of the new things that we are working on, I think are very, very excited because at the end of the day, if we can make that work to cash. Life cycle, faster, less error prone, more accurate, and ultimately get days outstanding or the lock up period shortened, uh, for farm.
That’s real value. That’s real value that we can provide to our customers. So, I think you’re going to see us focused heavily in that area around innovation and at the same time, not losing sight of still being able to deliver really, really good core capabilities across all of our applications, which is at the end of the day, we need to make sure that our end users? customers.
Have everything that they need to do their job efficiently, because without that we’re not doing our job as, as their preferred.
Bim Dave: Wow. very exciting stuff coming down the road. So, looking forward to seeing that evolve.
Elisabet Hardy: Now, maybe I just need to book myself in for another podcast, uh, probably here at the end of January, uh, which is coming, coming at us very,
Bim Dave: is indeed. No, I, I look forward to that and I think we definitely need to, need to get an update from you at that point. So, in you, you kind of mentioned the premier delivery partnership and, and as, as we think about all of these customers that you are, you know, in the process of moving from on-prem to cloud and all of the new, uh, logos that you’re signing. To come onto the platform from other systems and legacy systems outside of the Elite portfolio. , tell us a little bit about your your kind of strategic thinking around the premier delivery partnership of which Helm 360 is one of three. , what, what, what’s the thinking there and how, how is that helping, uh, the vision of getting your products out to market in the quickest and most efficient way?
Elisabet Hardy: Yeah, I mean, first, first off we think that having premier delivery partners is essential to not only how we as Elite scale, but I think it’s essential to giving our customers a choice of who they want to work with. , and You mentioned, and we talked about this, uh, in the, in the way of the beginning of the podcast, that there are a lot of preexisting relationships in, in, in our market and firms have preferred partners that they want to work with in, in projects, whether that is an upgrade project, that is a, business transformation project, that is a migration to, to the cloud project.
So, for us, giving that choice to our customers. was, was a really, really important part of putting together a strategy around having premier delivery partners and giving our customers those options. But it’s also important in another way. I think often there are service delivery outfits that may be able to perform all kinds of Jobs and, and projects on behalf of, of law firms, but they may not be close to the software provider.
So the key part of being a premier delivery partner is that and I, and I, and I hope, and I’ll put you on the spot them here. , but I hope, I hope that you as a premier delivery partner feels this because the whole notion of you being an extension of us means that you have to be also a part of that. Of Elite, so being inside of those sorts of 4 office walls of Elite and understand not only how does our technology operate?
What are we doing next? And how do we partner together to really be a unified team to serve our customers? I think that’s the other really important part of. As having premier delivery partners is that we can bring them in a lot closer to what it is that we are doing. Uh, and I think that’s helpful for our customers, but it’s also selfishly very helpful to us because we get a lot of really great feedback.
We get a lot of great input. That you’re hearing from, from customers that you’re working with so that that can help shape and form what we invest in and how we deliver our capabilities, uh, going forward too. So, I think for us, it was it was sort of, it was a critical step in, in, I think, in how Elite is form forming as, as, as an
Bim Dave: Yeah, no, and I can say from, from experience now having, you know, been part of the program for a while it has been hugely helpful for us to be that one step closer to the Elite team in terms of understanding what’s happening, what’s coming down the pipe so that we can educate The customers through the trusted relationships we have, right?
Because of the time we’re having firms come to us to talk about our experience of delivery of your solutions and almost, you know, having a little bit of an independent view. So, it’s not necessarily the vendor in this case, telling them that the product is great. It’s actually us from the experience that we’ve had delivering the product successfully to other firms. All over the world and being able to bring that knowledge and expertise to those firms that are considering those options and learning from best practice and evolving out all set for delivery to make sure that they’ve got the right solution in front of them to actually go to the three-cloud solution. And there’s, there’s certain things that the. I think often are underestimated as well. And I think, you know, going back to kind of talking about AI and some of the implications of what, what the AI functionality will bring to the table for not just Elite 3E, but any product that’s out there is really a lot.
There’s, there’s a large dependency with any AI solution in terms of making sure that the data. That is being leveraged is in a good state. And actually, a lot of the stuff that we’re able to do for customers is think, have those kind of thinking sessions and discovery sessions to understand what does the data look like today and leverage some of the tooling that we can bring to the table and expertise around data cleansing and making sure that your data is in a good state.
So when you get to that destination of being in the cloud, you’re in a really good space because you can actually leverage it to your advantage and, you know, take advantage of all that great., technology and tooling that you’re going to bring to the table from a product perspective because you’ve got reliable data to be able to point out and learn from to be able to enable some of the insights and other actions that might be possible in the future.
So, yeah, I think there’s a lot, a lot of benefit for customers having that choice and us being able to bring, you know, different aspects of expertise to make that, you know, that implementation smoother and as fast as possible for a firm.
Elisabet Hardy: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that kind of goes to that topic that we talked about a little bit about, which is how can how can a firm prepare themselves to make that journey and make the process of migrating their PMS to. The cloud and I think having a premier delivery partner alongside of that is really good.
And I think as firms sort of look into what they can do in 2025, if they haven’t already started on this journey is to really not wait any longer. But to. To do an assessment of their own prem environment, so they can go through the things that that that may or may not be well suited to bring with them, but then also start to plan out for what are we going to want to do when we are in the cloud?
What are what are our goals of transformation? What does that look like for us? Where do we want to gain efficiencies? Where do we want to operate differently? Where do we now have an opportunity? To, to do that. So, I, I, I think firms that haven’t yet started, uh, this process. I think that’s something really, really good to, to try and do as, as you look into ending the year and into, into 2025 and I think helm 360 and our other premier delivery partners, I think have been great in helping firms just do, do that.
Bim Dave: Yeah, absolutely. Now, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about Elite 3E, which is great, and the journey to cloud, but it would be great to just touch a little bit on eBilling Hub, which is obviously a cloud solution that’s been in the cloud for a very long time, actually. So, tell us what’s happening in the world of eBilling Hub, and what can we expect for the future of eBilling Hub for firms?
Elisabet Hardy: Yeah, and I think 1 of the things that you will see from us as we turn the leaf into, and we turn our attention into 2025 is we are going to start to speak about all of our, uh, cloud applications more as a. solution of applications and capabilities that work very well together. We tend to be very focused of talking three e.
Then we talk e billing hub and other products that we have in the Elite portfolio. But for us, e billing hub is a critical component of what we offer to our customers and making sure that e billing is as tightly integrated as it possibly can be with the other financial workflows that you have is a key priority for us.
And we have. We’ve done a lot of that already today. But I think what you can expect us to see is to take advantage of not only the data that sits in eBilling Hub and combining that data with some of your financial metrics that you have in the, in the, in the financial system of 3E, but also how can we start to harness the wealth of information that sits within all of our billing guidelines that have been collected up and refined over years.
And use them in ways that are going to improve. Change the way that you can start to operate in that work to cash, uh, life cycle. That’s really important. So, we think about first getting an onboarding your client, but then as you start to, to enter time, you start to, uh, prepare your Performa, you start to Prepare to send the bill out.
We have additional things that we believe can be very, very beneficial in making that process less error prone by leveraging and embedding additional intelligence that we have from e billing. Uh, rules, uh, that happened to sit inside of the e billing hub product today and, and bringing those two closer and closer together.
That’s going to be a big part of some of the things that you’ll see early on, uh, next year. The other part that you can, uh, continue to see from, from, from EBH and 3E alike is our investment around how do we make sure that we have integrations with. All the different applications that are needed and that becomes especially important for e billing because you have a world of tons of different spend management systems and billing vendors.
So, keeping those integrations, not only up to speed as they, as they change, but also making them as effective as possible and as painless for our clients as possible. And then keeping up with all the changes. In outside council guidelines, which is, I think, uh, an ever-moving target, uh, for, for law firms to keep up with.
So, we have some, uh, investments around that, that, that we’re making, uh, as well, uh, and focusing on with e billing, but I think overall It is a, it is a combined solution of 3d and e billing hub working really, really well together. So, like to think about this is better together., certainly and giving and taking advantage of how we bring those capabilities.
Bim Dave: Yeah, that’s really exciting to hear. I’m sure that there’ll be many, many clients that will be happy to hear the fact that, you know, they become close, closer together because it’s a great, great solution. Good stuff. And if we could just touch on the ProLaw customer base, obviously you have a quite a large number of customers running the ProLaw platform.
What can they expect from Elite over the next, you know, 12 to 18 months?
Elisabet Hardy: Yeah. So ProLaw is an important platform and an important solution for Elite and we’re proud to have it be part of our product portfolio. Like you mentioned, we have a lot of firms that use it. It’s a very feature rich and mature application. So, we continue to invest with our customers. Uh, voice, uh, being heard in what we invest in, uh, for our ProLaw releases which tend to be mainly focused around at this point, smaller, uh, enhancements, but also making sure that we keep the application secure, that we keep supporting, uh, any additional new integrations that might be needed for, for third parties.
As you know, ProLaw and, uh, e billing has also worked together., so, so that’s another part that customers can take advantage of. So, it’s, uh, an important part of what we offer today. And we’re still very dedicated to, to our ProLaw customer base and really partnering with the user groups across the U S and, and, and Canada to really make sure that we invest in the things that are top of mind, uh, for them and the enhancements that,
Bim Dave: That’s great to hear. Excellent. So, in terms of the, again, looking, looking ahead to the future, and thinking about some of the challenges that law firms face and some of the, some of the real challenges that they face. And I think you kind of highlighted this in your, in our conversation about ILTCON, where you can kind of imagine that if you’re sitting on the side of a law firm today, and they’re looking at technology investment as a whole, and they’re thinking about what solutions to implement. They are literally bombarded with. Hundreds of, if not thousands of AI solutions that all do different things and have different takes on how to solve a problem, but all fundamentally like built based on some of the AI technology that’s out there. And then there’s solutions like the way that you kind of describe some of the involvement of, uh, of an existing SAS platform, like three cloud that will be incorporating AI features into it. To enhance you know, the way, the way that it can operate for a law firm. What advice, what advice do you have for, for law firms that are basically thinking about how they should spend their money over the next 12 to 18 months? Because they have a challenge, a big challenge in front of them to make product selection and to make that meaningful, what, what kind of things should they be thinking about and how do they make, you know, good use of their technology spends, uh, for the future?
Elisabet Hardy: Yeah, I think my advice would be, and this is again, just speaking with so many C levels, uh, for, for firms around the world, which is, I would, I would kind of, I would kind of bucket the advice into, into three parts. I think the first part is be realistic about what AI can do and what AI is actually good at doing and the problems that AI is good at solving.
I think there’s a lot of, uh, buzzy things that tech companies can and will do. , and you hear a lot about different chat bots and sort of agents sitting on the side as, as a helper, perhaps, uh, of, uh, what that can do for you is that, is that, is that really driving real change or is it just a, Cool, uh, thing to have.
So, I would say be realistic about what the technology is good at doing. And is the technology being pointed at, which would be my 3rd, 2nd piece solving real problems. I think often we sort of get carried away with the thing that looks really shiny and [00:54:00] fun for the time, but is it really solving a problem that’s real for your end users or for your firm today?
And then I think security is going to continue to be something else of how AI is leveraged., is the data being treated securely? How are AI vendors or AI technology using your data to train their models? is, uh, AI being used in a, uh, sound and ethical way? Are there a lot of hallucinations around, uh, what AI is delivering back to you?
So, I think that’s going to be the, the sort of the third bucket that I think is going to stem itself from, from security around your data, making sure that you understand how that’s being used and leveraged and where does that data get transported to in order to go through an AI model. , so, so I think that’s the 3rd thing.
So, but I think for, for me, at least it comes down to. Using AI to solve real problems and looking at AI from the perspective of we think that it provides the best value when it is embedded into your workflows, embedded into your day to day work to really help you do your job faster or eliminate a laborious task and or bring intelligence in a way to you that you couldn’t have had otherwise.
We’re just going to run a report separately. So, we’ve our approaches is just that we want to be very thoughtful about it. We want to solve real problems and we tend to look at those real problems as manifesting themselves, uh, inside of business workflows that exist today, uh, inside of inside of your firm operations.
Bim Dave: Advice. Thank you for sharing that and thank you for the answers to the other questions because I think we’ve learned a lot about what’s going to be happening in the future from you and really appreciate that. So, I just want to move to a few wrap up questions I ask all of my guests, the first of which is – if you could borrow Doctor Who?s time machine and go back to yourself at 18 years old, what advice would you give yourself?
Elisabet Hardy: Oh, my Gosh! I’m going to, I’m going to, I’m going to give a sort of fun personal advice versus a work advice. I think I should have started running a lot earlier in my days, so I picked up running very late in life, just the last few years, and I keep thinking to myself how much better I would have been if I’d started to do this.
When I was 18, or given myself the advice that running is actually good for you., I probably would have been in my sort of fantasy mind, uh, maybe, uh, a little bit faster, a little bit better than what I can possibly.
Bim Dave: Good, good advice. My, my, my daughter is making me run at the moment. She’s eight years old and she’s very, very energetic and loves exercising. So literally like every Saturday morning, she’ll make me wake up and we’ll be running around, running around the house, going for a run outside, playing football or whatever.
But that’s very good advice. The earlier you start, the easier it becomes a habit and, and yes. Thanks. Yeah.
Elisabet Hardy: The earlier you start, the easier it becomes., but, uh, it’s, uh, it’s become a hobby that’s, uh, has been really fun to take up as of late, and, uh, I did just do my first marathon this year. So, it’s never too late. It’s never too late to do it. And, uh, it’s, it’s not about, I tell myself, it’s not about the time you finish it in.
I have to tell myself that because I’m never going to be that fast or good because I didn’t start early enough. It’s just about finishing the race and I think that can teach you a lot of things about life in general. It’s if you set your mind to something, you stick with the program you’re probably going to be able to accomplish those goals.
It may not turn out, exactly the way you had envisioned it, but you’ll cross.
Elisabet Hardy: Notice how I did not mention my finish time.
Elisabet Hardy: Notice how I did not mention my finish time.
Bim Dave: We’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll save that for the next one. And then, you know, you can build, you can improve your time by that time.
Elisabet Hardy: Yeah.
Bim Dave: You could, if you could travel anywhere in the world again, so your favorite travel destination in the, in the world.
Elisabet Hardy: Wow., I have never been to Latin America. So, I think that that would be really fun to do., I’ve also never been to South Africa., that would be a really fun destination. So, I tend to spend most of my time going back to my home country. So that takes up a lot of travel time for me, unfortunately.
So, I think I need to start to sort of widen out my travels, but I think I have a lot of corners of the world that I just haven’t seen. , so, so that, that, that’d be, that would be on the bucket list to do something like that.
Bim Dave: And any closing thoughts or advice that might benefit the legal professionals in our audience today?
Elisabet Hardy: Yeah. I mean, I think to, to close things out change is happening. Very, very fast in our industry. It’s an extremely exciting time to be in legal tech period and we are very proud to have customers like we do that partner with us. To help transform their operations and have that trusted partnership with our customers is really, really important., to us, uh, and with the larger legal tech ecosystem and being, uh, an integrated part of that which is Always part of our vision and strategy to be an open platform. And as I think about what we are focused on moving forward we are really laser focused on giving our customers the tools and capabilities to help them.
Be more efficient and more effective in everything that they do with their business operations. We truly want to be and believe we are the trusted experts in delivering digital financial management and business operation solutions to the legal, Space and the legal, legal vertical, and we want to help our customers innovate and meet them where they are on their journey to the cloud or their journey in digital transformation, which really comes down to a trusted partnership.
So, as we look forward, we continue to serve our customers proudly and being very humbled by the trust that we have from our customer.
Bim Dave: Thank you very much, Elisabet. It’s been a pleasure having you on the show today. And thank you again.
Elisabet Hardy: It’s been a pleasure being here. Thank you for having me, Bim. I look forward to coming back in January.
Bim Dave: Definitely look forward to it.