TLH Ep. 36 Revolutionizing Legal Strategy with AI: Insights from Nicole Clark

Hello, Legal Helm listeners! Today, we are thrilled to have Nicole Clark, CEO and co-founder of Trellis, a leading provider of state trial court data and analytics. Nicole’s extensive background as a business litigation, labor, and employment attorney, coupled with her experience handling complex cases in both state and federal courts, has positioned her as a key innovator in the legal space.

Frustrated by the fragmented nature of court data, Nicole founded Trellis with the vision of making accessible, actionable insights available to legal professionals at the state trial court level. Today, she’ll share with us how law firms can harness the power of AI and state court data to streamline and automate litigation tasks, improving efficiency and strategic decision-making. Join us as we dive into this fascinating conversation with Nicole Clark on transforming legal work through technology.

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

Nicole Clark is a business litigation and labor attorney with experience in both state and federal courts. She has worked at various law firms, from mid-size boutiques to large firms, defending corporations in complex class actions, wage disputes, and employment matters like wrongful termination. As CEO and co-founder of Trellis Research, Nicole leads a legal analytics platform that uses AI and machine learning to provide litigators with strategic insights. She is passionate about helping lawyers leverage technology to gain a competitive edge and achieve the best outcomes for their clients.

Bim Dave: Hello Legal Helm listeners. Joining us today is Nicole Clark, CEO and co founder at Trellis, a leading provider of state trial court data and insights. Prior to founding Trellis, Nicole was a business litigation, labor and employment attorney who handled litigation in both state and federal courts. She regularly represented multinational corporations in claims ranging from high profile trade secrets disputes to complex class action litigation.

Frustrated with relying on fragmented information to make strategic case recommendations, she created Trellis to provide accessible data and analytics at the state trial court level. Today, I’m going to be speaking with Nicole about how law firms can leverage AI and state court data to automate litigation tasks.

Nicole, hello, and welcome to the show.

Nicole:Thanks so much, glad to be here!

Bim Dave: Great. So, I wondered if we could start with you sharing the story of what inspired you to create Trellis, the platform that you’ve built.

Nicole: Absolutely. So, I, I was a litigator. As you mentioned, I practiced a lot of labor and employment, which is heavily litigated at the state court level. So, I was in state trial court constantly and I just really couldn’t believe that the largest court system in the world, the state trial court system, was fragmented across thousands of individual county courts.

So, it wasn’t even unified at the state level, let alone at a national level and I simply couldn’t believe that there wasn’t really just a single source of truth the way you would look up court appeals data, or you might even look up federal data on peace, that there wasn’t something at the state trial court side, which is where, of course, the highest volume of cases are. So, I really, you know, started percolating on the idea that this data existed, the industry had great resources and why wasn’t this data being properly aggregated? And then it really came to a head one night when I was writing a summary judgment motion and I was fed up. I didn’t know the judge, it was a complex issue and I went to one of my colleagues and I was just complaining to them and my colleague said that he had actually appeared before that judge a few years earlier on a very similar matter and we went and we checked in the file that of course he knew about that I never would have been able to find and there was a PDF in the file that was a ruling by my judge on my exact issue. And it literally wrote the motion for me, I could see the case law to use and I could see the way to organize the motion and I won. I wrote it in a quarter of the time, for me, that was a light bulb moment that this data existed, and how is it possible that litigators didn’t have this data, this practical information in the court system where they actually practiced that would help them make strategic decisions on cases and information about the judges that actually appeared before, or the way they’re opposing counsel had handled a very similar case in the past or a verdict at this level, so many pieces of information that lie in this largest court system. And I naively, thought I can be the one to do this and turns out it’s incredibly, incredibly difficult. But that is how we started with Trellis, we started collecting data in the courts that I was appearing in, which was across California at that point and then of course, expanded from there. We now cover 46 states, 3, 500 courts and counting.

Bim Dave: Fantastic. And obviously the transition from being in the field of law and practicing law to then running a legal tech company is a very different ballgame, right? So I’m interested to kind of hear from you in terms of how has that transition gone for you and were there any like key learnings in terms of bringing some of that experience of being a litigator, how does that play into like the legal technology space?

Nicole: I think that on the one hand, there’s pieces that are very similar and on the other hand there’s pieces that are very, very different, but that the knowing what litigators do and knowing the product to build, I think has been essential in building a product that is useful to litigators. I think there is really high value in folks that really understand practice, being able to build technology for the continued practice of law. So I think that was essential, I think that the level of context switching that you do as a lawyer, it helps greatly when you become an entrepreneur where your context switching all the time, um, problem solving, creative, you know, strategic solutions, those all go hand in hand and I think can really help build young entrepreneurs and set them up. I think one aspect of being a lawyer that didn’t serve me well was I was very used to everything sort of being on me and they were my cases and it was my work and everything should be perfect and those fly in the face of entrepreneurs where everything can’t be perfect if you’re moving very quickly and you simply can’t do everything yourself, you have to learn to delegate.

Bim Dave Yes, definitely one of the things to consider and I guess when you’re talking to lawyers that you’re potentially pitching the product to, I guess that helps that you come from a background of law, but there is an element of control that they like, right? They want to have control over, over a bunch of stuff and the the data that is presented to them being like a known source. Have you run into those kinds of challenges and how do you approach that in terms of making sure that they understand the value and some of the work that’s gone into making sure that that data is good and accurate?

Nicole: I think that lawyers are one of the most difficult groups to sell into and it makes sense. There’s been historically a natural resistance to tech, there is you know, skepticism about everything and risk aversion. I think though, what really helps litigators is one, understanding the problem themselves.

So, the problem that we’re solving, they know intimately because they deal with it. The other is the human is required. It’s not a tech solution where we’re replacing lawyers, it’s quite the opposite, I think what we’re doing is giving the most information, the most data so that the lawyers can actually make strategic decisions, where as otherwise they were operating blindly and the way that we build faith with our customers is really letting them into the data themselves so they can see they look at the underlying cases, they look at the underlying motions, they can see the data and we’re not simply, you know, an answer without the ability to look under the hood at where the data actually came from.

Bim Dave: Yeah, it makes total sense and in terms of the product itself, um, perhaps you can give us like the high level in terms of what is it intended to be and what’s the USP of the tool in comparison to other, you know, legal research tools that might be out there that are enabling lawyers to have different views of their cases.

Nicole: You can really think about what we do as split up into a few different categories. You have the trial search, right? Which is really a unified system to search across the state trial court system, whether you’re searching by judge, by legal issue or by motion, right? Being able to pull up all of that information from a single source and with that goes a learning functionality and a lot of additional information, then you have the insights layer, which is the analytics layer, so, really breaking down information analytics on how judges rule on how law firms, all of their cases across the nation and what are the outcomes of those cases. So, a lot of information, how judges rule on very specific pre trial motions so you can make important decisions about you know, which motions to bring in and which might, you know, not be the best use of your time, your client’s funds. And then, we have the AI pillar, which really all of our products sit on top of this foundation of data so we have the largest foundation of state trial court data out there and our new AI tools really sit on top of that foundation and the way that we’re different from other legal research providers and then I’ll go specifically to AI, so other legal research providers, they generally traditional legal research focuses on court of appeals data and above and we, of course, focus on that trial court level, which is really the level where every case starts in 99.7% percent of cases and they never actually make it to trial, let alone to court of appeals. So, we’re giving a different look, I think of it sometimes as if you think of Court of Appeals and above, it’s like the academic answer, what should the law be? What should the lower courts be applying? But then looking at the lower courts through Trellis and seeing, practically speaking, they’re not always applying the law that you hope would be, and it could be very specific by judge and there’s a lot that goes on at a practical level that you just won’t see.

And the court of appeals data, and that’s really where we’re different, we’re really an entirely different data ecosystem, an entirely different court system than traditional legal research. And then with our AI tools, they’re different because they lay on top of this trial court data. And what’s really different there is we have in terms of file documents, motions, briefs, we have over 300.000.000 file documents. This is massive amount of attorney work product at scale that we can train with and that’s something very different. The other sort of a I tools that are out there that sit on top of court of appeals are great research tools and it’s very important but if you’re looking for output that trial court attorneys can use it’s going to be useful for them having those trial court documents and that trial court data, that’s what sets us apart. Is the ability to create work product based on trial court data at scale, which is something that we have that others don’t. Were also not a chat platform. So, a lot of the AI tools that are out there are sort of a research chat where you put in maybe an overall question and at the end of the day the responses that you get from a chat tend to have to be turned into work product somehow, and that requires work from the attorney to do that. What we really try is to do that effort for the attorneys where they’re not having to create prompts, they’re not becoming prompt engineers, but instead, we’re creating work product for them in a way that only we can do based on all of the training data that we have.

Bim Dave:Yeah, and help us understand a little bit about the data side of things. So presumably this data is in various forms, right? Like in terms of how you get it. So how, how do you ensure that kind of pipeline of data is a current, so it’s like good and also that it’s validated to be accurate. Cause I’m guessing that there’s an element of messy data to deal with in terms of the feeds that come in that then feed your AI algorithms.

Nicole: Yes and it’s funny you used the word feeds, I wouldn’t even use that word because it’s not even that easy. Uh, there are no you know there’s no APIs to plug into, it is a very difficult task of going county by county and aggregating this data and it is unstructured data, just like you’re talking about.

Every court system hosts their data separately, they maintain it separately in different formats, they have classifications that are all different from each other, one court calls a personal injury case PI and another court calls it personal injury five and then there’s thousands of those even within individual courts so there is a lot of work that we do. One of the most important things that that we do that’s allowed us to run these insights and so layer on the AI is what we did as a core of our company, which has really always been a data company and we take unstructured data and we structure it and we normalize it. And that’s why, when you think of sort of the core of our search platform, that you’re able to search through filters and through search terms and all that, because we’ve taken all of that unstructured data in the thousands of different formats that we’re getting it in and we apply our own structure to it.

So, there’s a thousand different ways to say personal injury, and we map that to Trellis personal injury and so you’re really able to have structured data because we have this structured data because we know not only a case and the parties and the judge, but we know the motion type, we know the outcome of that motion, we know the outcome of the case because we have all of that structure, we’re then able to put in structured data to create models on top of, and that’s why our AI is really able to create such strong draft output for litigators is because it’s not just raw data sort of thrown in, um, but instead it’s very structured data where we have all of the information that the model has when it is looking at the data and it’s easily able then to also find answers to the solution, which lie within our data and those are the questions we’re asking, we’re not asking open ended questions, we’re asking questions that we have the data that it’s able to pull from and respond to.

Bim Dave: I think you touched on one of the use cases being, um, how it might draft arguments for a case. Can you talk us through that use case specifically in terms of what’s the process that you are going through to be able to then give the lawyer an ability to be able to use that as putting together an argument that makes sense. And I’d be interested to hear from you in terms of how much time does that translate to in terms of time savings? So, I assume that that’s quite a big area of the kind of the legal work that these guys are doing.

So how much time do you save by doing that?

Nicole: Absolutely. So, I like to think of motion drafting as sort of the holy grail, it’s really incredible because you need to take so many different pieces into consideration when you’re thinking about creating draft output that’s going to be the strongest arguments for attorneys. Every state obviously has its own laws, its own court rules, all sorts of things. So, think of these as individual models both by motion type as well as jurisdiction, uh, in order to be trained on the data that can support that. So, what happens first? Well, first let’s say you start out with a complaint of a case that you need to draft. That case, uh, has all of its own facts that make it very different from from other cases.

But what do you need to do in that case? You need to look at the model basically takes in the facts of the case, and it looks across the jurisdiction for the cases with the most similar facts and the most similar legal issues so then it has now thousands of motions with the most similar facts and most similar legal issues. From there, it looks at the arguments of these cases, where were the strongest arguments made? Where was case law cited to the most? um, where, what did outcomes look like? And it takes from there the strongest arguments from cases with the most similar facts and the most similar legal issues and if it just did that, that would save attorneys a ton of time, but it actually goes a step further and this is what I think is most impressive. It then takes the strongest arguments that it’s found from other motions, the strongest case law, the strongest overall, um, thesis and then from there, it looks at the facts of the case that you’re writing the motion for, and It applays those facts to the strongest arguments. So, it does really what is the crux of legal writing, which is applying the facts of your case to the law and that’s what’s so special about what our motion drafting tools do, what our argument drafting tools do is not only finds you the strongest arguments that are out there but it then applays the facts of your case, so I rec format really cleanly applying facts to law and that’s really what our draft arguments tools do.

Bim Dave: Sounds very impressive.

So, presumably with all of this data that’s collected and combined with the case information , what impact does Trellis have on the case assessment side of things in terms of maybe predicting outcomes and other things that it can bring at a case level?

Nicole: Our case report tool have been one of the most loved by our customers. They’ve been really, really well received and the reason is because exactly what you’re talking about. We have all this information, we not only have all the information at the case level, right?

All of the metadata that we just talked about judge parties, motions, everything, but we have the, uh, playbook, if you will, of similar cases and how those have played out across the nation or within a particular jurisdiction or before a particular judge. And so we’re able to, from the start of the case, really assess the case from both a high level strategic standpoint, all the way down to the tactical, and so what do I mean by that? I mean it’s an ultimate playbook for a case from the very start of the case, where you’ll have all A lot of the tasks that attorneys need to do creating timelines based on the facts, figuring out which witnesses to depo, what do you need to deposit them about?

What are additional witnesses, right? So, all of your discovery thinking up front, what actually needs to be proven in the case based on the causes of action, what are the facts that have been alleged that support those causes of action, what else needs to be proved? So, you’re thinking all the way down to trial. What actually needs to be accomplished here down to the tactical of next steps procedurally, what motions might be the most successful? What are your filing deadlines? What are any of your statute of limitations, right? Everything in one place for the attorney from the very start of the case with recommended next steps all the way down to risk assessment, what is the jury pool in this venue look like? What have recent verdicts in similar cases look like? So really wrapping the case up in a manner where the attorney learns everything that they need to from the start so they can make the best decisions from the start and I know for me when I was an associate, it took years before I got to take a case to trial where I really understood how all the pieces fit together and that’s one of the things that we’ve been told is so helpful here for associates that are working on cases, getting able, being able to see the big picture of the case along with recommended tactical next steps based on similar cases. And we found that that firms find this information so valuable, that they’re actually creating workflows so that these case reports get to the attorneys directly, at the start of the case where they don’t even have to log into Trellis, right? The complaint gets assigned to them, the case gets assigned to them along with the case report automatically in their inbox as part of a workflow from the very start, all the way to cases haven’t even been assigned yet. It’s part of business development and reaching out to clients and you know a ton about their case, and you’re able to really build that confidence with the client and set it up with, you know, alerting systems, dinner systems, whether you use Trellis or you use CNS or any of the other platforms out there for alerting, being able to just have that directly link in where you have everything you need to know about the case for business development purposes too. And so case assessment is, uh, think of it as a report to your client, it’s more of a narrative format, giving you everything that you need to be able to give the client information whereas the case report, this is distilled information for the attorney in bullet point, giving them everything they need to move forward very quickly.

Bim Dave:Yeah, no, very, very good.

You, you mentioned the timeline feature, I believe it’s a feature and, uh, actually that was one of the things that I was reading on your website that actually stood out as something that’s quite an interesting feature and I wondered if you could dive into that a little bit more in terms of how does that give an attorney the edge during a litigation trial?

Nicole: One of the things that I used to do at the start of a case, and I was trained by some great trial attorneys, was creating a timeline from the very start of the case and creating what we refer to as a cast of characters, um, who is involved in this case? What is their role? Um, what information do they have?

What discovery is connected to them? And then a timeline and your timeline evolves over the case to include now, as you’ve done depositions and to include as you do discovery and that timeline naturally sort of lends itself to creating statement of facts as you do motions and so those are two tasks that I always had to do at the start of my cases. And so those are ones that we really focused on helping the attorneys do from the start of the case and we actually help them look at the case from a timeline in a couple different ways. They can look at the facts at a role level, right? Uh, this person and the timeline of facts that have all that involves them, they can look at it from a chronology of earlayst event to the latest event, we give it to them actually in a couple formats depending on what they’re trying to accomplish, whether they’re thinking about it from a deposition standpoint or from the overall case standpoint. We also allow timelines to be created, not just on single documents but across documents so if you want to upload your deposition testimony and you want to upload discovery and you want to upload the complaint and you want to be able to pull all of that information into a chronology events giving that timeline and that timeline ends up being so essential for one, obviously, if you make it all the way to trial, but long before that, when you’re doing the work that needs to be done to build the case for discovery for every motion that you’re drafting, you’ll need to be referring to timeline facts that happened and then, of course, where in the discovery it points to, and that’s another thing that our timeline feature does is point to the actual document, where this fact was alleged to be able to build that, you can always go back and check that and you can just hover over and actually see the underlying document there as well and that’s actually one thing that’s very very different about Trellis versus some other AI platforms.

When you think sort of at the case level is we have this information, we have the complaint, we have every event that’s occurred at the docket level, we have the motions, we have the facts that are alleged in those motions, and so we’re able to pull much of this information, if not all, often without anyone having to input any information because we already have that in our database, even if it’s motions that that firm has filed, we have them because they’ve been publicly filed so we don’t even need the firm to upload information making it very easy to just go into Trellis, use the complaint that we already have, run things at the case level, run things at the document level, etc.

Bim Dave: Yeah, no, that’s very handy. So if you, if you kind of break down some of the features that you’ve just touched on, like they all bring individual value, but if you were to think about the most impactful use cases that have been solved through Trellis that may have transformed a legal strategy, like any examples like that, that you could share with the audience?

Nicole: I think that the case assessment and case report are the ones that very very quickly from the start of the case give you essential information, whether it means assessing risk and thinking about settlement strategy, whether it means being able to discuss the case with your client and be informed and be able to recommend strategies based on that again, we give it the data, the attorneys still come up with the strategies. We can say, based on this data, this is what we’ve seen be successful before, but the litigators themselves, they still are the ones that are sophisticated enough to be able to use this data to make the strategic recommendations but some of those recommendations, whether it be don’t answer this case instead move to dismiss this case from the start and here’s how you can draft arguments that will be helpful for that, I mean, those are case ending. Let’s say if you’re a defendant, those really win the case for you, build your reputation with your client and are massive time saving as well so those can have some really really big impacts all the way down to just thinking through your judge in places like California, you can actually request assignment to a different judge if you do it within the first 15 days of a case, the judge will have endless impact on your case and that’s a really important decision that you need data to make a strategic response on. So there’s that side and then there’s the overall efficiency and the efficiency isn’t to say that attorneys then will build less. The efficiency actually allows attorneys in many cases to build more and that’s because I know for me, there was always more work to do on my cases, I just didn’t have time to do it. And when you’re able to move through tasks more efficiently or you have the information that allows you to move through tasks, you’re then able one, to make more sophisticated decision and to work on more sophisticated work but you’re also able to build out your cases and develop them much more than you might otherwise be able to if you’re focused on grunt work that takes a ton of time but it’s necessary.

Bim Dave: That’s a really good point because I think sometimes there’s a fear factor with some of these tooling but actually like you said, it’s really moving your focus from maybe what could be lower value work to higher value work and the other volume of work that’s always there, right? I just want to lean in on something you said just now, there’s an element of client that’s involved here and I’m wondering what you’re seeing in terms of the benefits to the actual client because, are you seeing that this is being used as like a differentiator at the BD point, you know, in terms of bringing the customer on board and what elements of the product are kind of exposed in terms of some of the outputs to the customer during a case cause I’m wondering if some of that stuff is actually having an impact in terms of the customer experience.

Nicole: I think the, the customers at this point, and, um, a lot, we, we span across smaller firms to the largest day in 100. Uh, as customers. And if we’re thinking right now, let’s say about corporations, um, there’s an expectation that the attorneys are using technology at this point, and they want to know, and they want to feel confident now they don’t want you to put, you know, hallucinations on file.

That’s not acceptable. Wouldn’t be acceptable to any client. Um, but they do want to know that you’re doing work efficiently and that, I think has been a tension and a struggle with the legal industry for a long time is clients wanting efficiency but also wanting the best outcome and the time that it takes to achieve those outcomes in many cases but the clients want and are able to build confidence when the attorneys are able to share information with them, I think that’s the biggest bar complaint about attorneys overall, year on year is lack of communication and the reason that that is is often because the attorneys are drowning in so much of the work that they’re doing that it’s hard to step away from it to just tell clients what’s even happened recently but when you have that information at your fingertips, it becomes much easier to converse with the client to feel confident in what you’re telling them because you have the data to support it and to be able to talk with the client strategically. Some clients have different goals, some want a case to end, some want to prove appointed trial, right? There’s different goals and how can you use the data and the technology to achieve those goals at the best cost of the client and ultimately efficiency for the client, the combination efficiency and great outcome, that’s how you keep clients, that’s how they give you more business. So, it really is ultimately a boon for the attorneys that use technology to be able to build confidence in their clients to get better outcomes because they’ll get more business.

That is a beautiful cycle but once you spend a lot, and you don’t get great outcomes. Well, that makes clients think about where they’re giving their work and I think there’s a lot that can be done with technology to really make sure that client relationship is maintained.

Bim Dave: Yeah, totally agree. Um, so I want to talk about the kind of impact of onboarding on a solution like Trellis, so, for a potential law firm that’s listening today and thinking about spending their dollars on a technology solution, as you know, markets flooded with lots of AI solutions at the moment.

So, I’d be interested to get your take in terms of how do you quantify value and return on investment, right? And how quickly does a firm adopt your product to see some of that return on investment.

Nicole: So it’s going to depend on the size of the firm and the number of attorneys also, which Trellis product they’re using, if we talk about AI for a moment, the return on investment can often be within the first month you help them with case assessment or case report, there are big wins that can be accomplished very quickly that can happen very very early and more than pay for the solution. Um, you mentioned about onboarding and we know how important on boarding is, one, we try and make our solution extremely simple so that it doesn’t take a ton of training. That being said, you’re always going to, you know, potentially have questions wonder about an output, whatever the case may be, I wish a button did something different than it actually does and give us that feedback. We have a client success team that are all former litigators that are dedicated to our enterprise customers, you have a dedicated rep with litigation background that is there to help you get the most out of your solution, whether it’s research questions, whether it’s a I questions, whether it’s helping to train your team on board new people, we find that the success of the customers is the success of the product as well. And so we lean in very heavily to our customer success and to supporting our customers.

Bim Dave: Yeah, absolutely. So, what would you see as kind of the next focus areas for you guys? What are you most excited about in terms of new features and functions that you guys are working on for the future?

Nicole: When you think about you know, where we are, we’re still in such an early, exciting time right now and I think there’s so much, you think about the lifespan of a case and the work that can be done, right now we focus on some of the main dispositive motions but there are a ton of motions throughout the case that we can help create draft content for. There are endless practice areas and regulations and laws to be able to lean in on and create more outputting and focus on. So when you really think about what’s out there at the case level, we have a lot of great tools, but we’re just getting started, I think the more that we can put and again, we focus on trial court litigators, we are not a tool for transactional corporate attorneys, there’s great tools out there for that, that’s not what you use Tellis for, you will use Trellis if you’re a trial court litigator, and we have built some great tools and we’re going to continue to build tools with our customers telling us What they need next, what’s the most important to them? And obviously continuing iterate on everything that we do and constantly making it better, models are getting better, they’re getting less expensive. We’re at such a great place right now, especially with the volume of data that we have to continue to really have the most valuable product out there for trial court litigators.

Bim Dave: Yeah, no, good to hear. So, from a Trellis perspective, you’re obviously making an impact in the space that you play in, what else are you seeing generally speaking from the legal landscape perspective? As I mentioned, there’s a bunch of stuff happening, right? And a lot of that stuff is actually reshaping how we think about the practice of law and how a lot of firms are kind of rethinking how they practice law, what do you see happening over the next five to ten years in terms of that technology shift?

Nicole: I think right now you have a lot of great firms that are testing and that are experimenting and figuring out where our AI actually lays and obviously that’s somewhere where we’ve leaned in heavily to say, it’s all great to ask questions, but what actually needs to be produced at the end of the day?

What is output? Actually look like and really try to focus there on creating draft work product for attorneys but I think we’re still at such an early phase, there will clearly be a mass adoption, I think that in many ways on the corporate and transactional side, that will be faster because the data there is just so much more structured. And so I think that will be the first to drop where you will have the expectation that the work is created by models and reviewed by attorneys, I think that we’re still earlier in the journey on that side, litigation firms are leaning in and they’re figuring out and understanding ROI and developing and building those cases over the next 5 years though, will be very obvious and you know, it will be calculated and every firm will be utilizing technology across the board, no matter what practice area their attorneys are in. And I think the real question there as you said, five years is, is it five years? Is it two years? Is it longer? We know this is happening and we can see this shift, we can all see it but what’s the timeline and where it’s full adoption and expectation at industry standard and that’s where we’re watching, I think it might be a faster than five years.

Bim Dave: Yeah, I think you might be right, it’s interesting to see how things are transforming, not just from like law firms actually taking technology more seriously and actually setting up innovation functions to drive some of the exploration, which I think is a really positive shift that we’ve seen.

But also the client side is a much more bigger client awareness in terms of how effective or how more effective their legal service can be, where they are leveraging some of these technologies. So I know a lot of the firms that I speak to, one of the questions that will be in the kind of sales process will be, you know, what are you using to kind of help accelerate delivery of service or improve quality of delivery and all that kind of stuff and a lot of it is driven by some of the AI growth and, and some of the solutions that are out there. So, yeah, I agree. Very, very interesting times ahead.

Nicole: Absolutely.

Bim Dave: So, so I look in your background and I see theTrellis, I know the name’s Trellis. Is there a story that you want to share in terms of how did we come to the name Trellis? I’m keen to know.

Nicole: We came to the name Trellis simply because, you see the Trellis in the background, if you ever came to our office, you’d see it’s a jungle, my home is a jungle as well, I love growing things and I think of the business in the same way, really starting something, creating life and growing it to something that can both, you know, help you support and grow your practice. And that’s really where Trellis came from.

Bim Dave: Excellent, so I want to move to some wrap up questions, if I may. Sure.

The first of which is if you could go back to Nicole at 18 years old in Dr. Who’s time machine, what advice would you give yourself?

Nicole: I would have moved in to being an entrepreneur sooner, I think it actually took a really long time to convince myself, even once I had the idea for Trellis, it took years to build up the confidence to jump and to build the business and I would have loved to have helped myself have confidence to move even earlier.

Bim Dave: Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s a great one actually and, and hopefully that encourages others to get up and, and make things happen because I think more people that do that and the more change comes and exciting products come to market. So yeah, really, really good. Um, so second question is, what’s your favorite place in the world that you’ve visited and would recommend people go and go and visit?

Nicole: Ooh, there’s a wide world out there, I wish I’ve seen more of it. There’s a national park in Maine that is called Acadia National Park and that is just one of my happy places, it’s an incredible park for anyone who gets a chance to go up there. It’s at the very tip of Maine, it’s just a really special place and I would recommend anyone who’s venturing that direction to make your way there.

Bim Dave: Fantastic. I will add it to my bucket list. And just finally, are there any closing thoughts or advice that would benefit the legal professionals in our audience today?

Nicole: I think more experimenting, I would love firms of all sizes, in house attorneys. I’d love to see more experimentation, they shouldn’t just be reviewing AI tools and demoing AI legal tech tools. Go use Anthropic, use GPT, you know, really get comfortable to understand what that output, what the limitations are and then you’re going to be best positioned to know whether a legal tech AI company is really providing value, more experimentation, the more that we get comfortable with these tools, especially as they’re changing so rapidly, the better equipped we are to be able to leverage them.

Bim Dave: Totally agree, I think that’s great advice. I think the hands on approach is the best approach, right? The more we can learn, the better we end up at. So yeah, totally with you on that one. Nicole, thank you very much for your time today. It’s been very insightful, very excited as to what Trellis brings to the table and I’m sure our audience learned a lot so thank you again for joining us today.

Nicole: Thank you so much, Bim. Great being here.