By Pablo Yannone Sancho, Journalist at GLTH

Probably if you came across Tom Martin along the GLTH, you would have a very passionate conversation posing and answering —or trying to do— very big questions. Don’t worry, he is not that intense actually. He just wrote his first computer program when he was 11. And then he studied philosophy. First, to learn more about life. Later, he realized that it helped him to choose his next degree: Law.
Then he had all the tools to take the next step and ask himself a big question from his philosopher's standpoint: What does AI and law mean? How is it going to change our relationship with each other and our society? If he has found an answer is still a mystery, but anyway, he keeps looking for it as Founder and CEO at Lawdroid, a company dedicated to helping lawyers increase their task x10.
Know more about Tom
His concern about the big questions stems from his upbringing, which was full of books. His father read “voraciously” and they had very interesting conversations that got Tom thinking. He appreciates that a lot: “I think with most everyone, that's how it starts, right? It's with your parents and their relationship with you and their relationship to the world. And so, that's just part of who I am.”
To Tom, “know thyself” is not only a famous quote from Socrates, but a very important matter that has to do with the question of “authenticity.” “I think it's only through that and being honest with yourself, that you know when to ask for help,” claims Tom.
Authenticity is crucial to collaborate with others, work in a team, and evolve. It came to me as a paradox that Tom said that, maybe, if we traveled 250 years into the future, we could see that we have not changed a lot. Does this mean that we would not have known ourselves for all that time? “We've been the same for hundreds of thousands of years,” says Tom. “The context has changed.” And with context, Tom also regards, of course, technology.
But before we talked about legaltech, I had to ask him the last random question: If you had to watch a TV series on repeat, which one would it be? Tom turned out to be a sci-fi fan: he loves the latest Battlestar Galactica. “This new one is much more sophisticated, much more, you know, there's references to literature and philosophers. And I really liked the fact that Edward James Olmos was, you know, on it.”
Then, Alexa suddenly joined our conversation and reminded Tom of a task, which drove us, again, to talk about technology, a field that he dominates (who else can make Alexa more useful than for listening to music?).
The adoption of legal technology in Canada
In terms of legaltech, Tom alleges that 47% of Canadian lawyers have used AI in some way. “I think everyone that I speak with from an anecdotal side of just getting their perspective, they understand that it's important and something they need to learn to use.”
That percentage is high, taking into account that lawyers in Canada are more “conservative” than in the US. By conservative, Tom means that lawyers “have stricter ethical requirements and, also, take a slow wait-and-see approach to make sure that, let the Americans go first, see how it works out, and then take lessons learned from that.”
He also thinks that the use of AI within the legal sector is lower in Germany or the UK. Whereas in other countries like Brazil, it is higher, as there are millions of cases “backlogged” and incentives are greater.
This does not mean that there are not many legal tech startups, such as Clio, based in Vancouver. Despite this, it can be more difficult to find clients willing to pay for legal tech. Tom talks about the “trough of disillusionment,” where people are kind of put off: “I think lawyers have a lot of questions and there's been some negativity about generative AI for inaccuracy. And so that has definitely affected legal AI vendors like LawDroid's ability to sign up more customers, but we still have quite a bit of interest.”
Well, maybe there are more vendors than customers, but it drops an optimistic perspective for the future: “I think it's good overall because the more vendors you have in the space, the more competition, the more differentiation, the more value that's delivered for customers, namely the lawyers and law firms.”
The future of legal tech: it keeps expanding
Tom also highlights the incoming future when companies will also provide solutions for the end users, the consumers: “It's not just the lawyers who control everything in terms of legal services. It'll also be consumers being able to help themselves with generative AI tools. So the field of legal tech has expanded. It has grown. It's become more sophisticated.”
Those tools more focused on the final user, also known as AI by design, have to be well thought out in terms of the user experience. “And that's something that with traditional law firms is the user experience; the client experience is usually the last thing that they have in mind,” adds Tom.
The arrival of these new technologies, as well as increasing the education of law among people, could help to reduce the number of legal problems and enhance access to justice. After all, education helps to prevent, and educating people about law consists of “educating about their relationships with each other, which is what the law is about.” A very interesting consideration that aligns a lot with the purpose of our global hub: to promote relationships within the legal tech world, which as seen with Tom, is getting bigger and bigger since technology changes, and so do contexts.
Would you like to discuss all these aspects with Tom and get deeper into them? He encourages you to reach out to him and check out his substack, which is LawDroidManifesto.com. He publishes a podcast and an article weekly!
CEO & Founder, Lawdroid
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