Code & Counsel

Navigating Legal Innovation through Technology

• Chetan • Season 1 • Episode 1

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For a video version of this podcast visit https://youtu.be/ZckkPH0dAkc?si=EbO4AV3uj63Yvmji

How can you transform your legal practice and accelerate business processes to light speed? Join us as we, Chetan and Gurunath from Quoqo, share our personal journey and the passion that drove us to create this podcast. You'll gain insights into how we aim to break down the complex world of legal tech for professionals from various fields, from law firms to finance. Our mission is to highlight the essential role of advanced technologies, like AI, in enhancing efficiency within the legal sector.

Ever wondered how AI can revolutionize document management? During a pivotal moment at a financial institution demo, Poco's tagline, "accelerating businesses to light speed," was born. In this episode, we discuss our extensive product range and the technological evolution of our platform, where early adoption of machine learning transformed manual processes. We tackle the challenges of managing multiple legal tech products and underscore the necessity for comprehensive solutions, especially for in-house legal departments. Our AI-driven tools streamline everything from contract management to compliance, ensuring smoother workflows and higher efficiency.

Struggling with cumbersome document storage and retrieval? Traditional methods often fall short, but AI offers a game-changing solution. We delve into the benefits of advanced search options, like semantic searches, which drastically cut down time spent locating documents. Learn about maintaining consistent document creation styles and preserving institutional memory to ensure continuity even during staff transitions. We also emphasize the importance of clear communication, especially when breaking down technical jargon like LLMs, making it accessible for all our listeners. Join us as we bridge the gap between law and technology, making complex concepts both understandable and practical.

For more insights and discussions on the intersection of technology, law, and business, subscribe to our podcast and stay updated. Connect with us on social media for live updates, behind-the-scenes content, and more. Thank you for listening, and don’t forget to share your thoughts and questions in the comments or reach out to us directly!

Mail us at hello@quoqo.com or visit our website at www.quoqo.com.

Speaker 1: 0:00

okay, let me know whenever we can start. Yeah, yes, start. Hey, guru, finally we have our own podcast. We have been working on this for such a long time and finally we found the time and the resources to get this done. You know, and just you know what do you. And finally we found the time and the resources to get this done. You know, and just you know, what do you.

Speaker 2: 0:30

I think it's a great opportunity to be able to convey to our viewers what we are doing and what we are focusing on, all the things that we deal with, how we can help them, etc. I think it's a great occasion.

Speaker 1: 0:45

I agree, but before we get into the nitty-gritties, I think we should let's just introduce ourselves, what we do and what our company does, and then take it forward. So, hi everyone, Thanks for listening to the podcast. I hope that all of you see this gain value from this and please keep your comments coming in. So I'm Chetan. I'm the founder of Poco. I'm a lawyer by profession. It's been more than 25 years now and I spend a lot of time in corporate and technology. And I started Poco with a view of making sure that organizations have access to cutting-edge legal technology, because when I started practice, apart from plain old email and Word, there was nothing else. So over to you.

Speaker 2: 1:40

Yeah, I think what we cover in this series of podcasts we should be covering what we are, so, how we started, etc. I think that's one of the things that we will be covering and then over the next course of the series.

Speaker 1: 1:58

We can always edit this out, but start the setting.

Speaker 2: 2:02

Introduce yourself. Hello, hi everyone. My name is Guru Nath. I'm the CEO of this company. I've been associated with the Koko for at least you know, since almost since the inception of this company. I have with this for my background. I have a PhD and then and an MBA from my bank, so it's a. It's a it's a really great opportunity to be working in such a company where we are at the crossroads of technology and legal. So with that I think we can start.

Speaker 1: 2:35

Yeah, and I think Guru brings. Guru is a data scientist, leads on operations and pretty much we work together on so many things as well. But what we thought about why we wanted to start this podcast, we found that there's a lot of legal tech. People use a lot of jargon, they use AI in the middle and there's so much tech floating around. We also wanted to sort of like really make our viewers understand what is legal tech. You know, viewers can be in organizations, they can be in law firms, or they can be professional lawyers, or can be in functions such as procurement, operations, finance and so on. So this is one of the reasons that we wanted to start. Also, you had mentioned, guru, that you wanted to bridge the legal complexities. You're not a lawyer by training, but you are pretty much in the middle of legal tech that of continuous legal tech so can you just expand on what you meant by this?

Speaker 2: 3:52

So, basically, legal domain has been quite archaic for quite some time, the sense that everything was pen and paper and everything. People then moved on to Word and other technologies. But then now is the time when they need to take that leap and go to the next level, uh adopt all the few, all the power of the ai and all the new technologies that are coming in so that they can uh cut down on their times. They can be more, much more efficient. Okay, so when I'm going to talk about technology and how it can be applied to legal, so I'm talking about all the associated, you know, all the inventions or discoveries that have happened in the past so many years, and how we can apply it to the domain of legal so that our users and the people who are actually into the contracting business or any legal applications, they will be able to achieve it in a much more efficient way applications, they will be able to achieve it in a much more efficient way.

Speaker 1: 4:53

Right? So also, just, you know we are old birds in this domain, each of our respective domains. So I think you know, guru, if I remember, we started off using WordStar you know, it's a text-based editor. Then people moved to WordPerfect If you worked in law firms, it's like you basically were one of the first people to actually use tech. Email existed, but not as we know it today and then people migrated to Word and Maxim Outlook. But now and all of this has happened probably in the last 30 years but now you may have a whole host of solutions, right From CRM to contract management, ai reviews, to so many things. And which also brings us to the next thing, saying what can we expect?

Speaker 1: 5:39

you know from this podcast. You know I have a bunch of ideas. You have to, but why don't you go first?

Speaker 2: 5:47

So I think so let's give our viewers a glimpse of what we are actually doing here as a part of Coco and how we are making a difference with respect to what is already existing. So you have incorporated Coco or startedCO with a certain set of ideas. We will first talk in this particular, in this session. We'll talk about how COCO has evolved and what the main objective or agenda or goal of COCO, or you starting the COCO. Then we'll try to understand and give our viewers an understanding of it.

Speaker 1: 6:22

I think that would be a good starter episode as well, but I think we need to also I mean, one of the things that we talked about was looking at industry trends, look at case studies also educate people how different technologies can evolve or really assist them can evolve or really assist them right, because legal tech has a wide range of use cases, right From B2B to B2C to B2B2C or all those combinations and so on. So it's going to be so. What people can expect from this podcast is like an educational series. It's also about sort of like going through various products to see how legal tech has evolved. Also generally sort of like engaging with the audience to see how some of these things come out of this package.

Speaker 2: 7:13

What we would also cover is the hype around AI, and is it a hype or?

Speaker 1: 7:20

is it actually a slogan?

Speaker 2: 7:21

No, don't say that.

Speaker 1: 7:23

You've got to cut this out or the revolution. You're an AI company. You can't say it was right, the so called AI. No, no, no, Right, right. Start 3, 2, 1, go.

Speaker 2: 7:39

What I think we should also cover is how AI is revolutionizing the world around us and also how we can make our lives better in the legal field.

Speaker 1: 7:51

And also, yeah, I think that's. That's quite a bit, covers quite a few things as well. This pause you have to make all these shots short. I asked him to pause one side, a, I did, and then the other one earlier. You edit it out. Calm yourself, guru, you are very tense. You can make out from your body language. Be natural on this, okay so okay, let's start Three, two, one.

Speaker 1: 8:35

So, guru, we wanted to also talk about POCO's journey and how we were evolved as an organization. So for people coming into this new POCO is the name of our legal tech venture. Poco is derived from the word status quo and we wanted to change how businesses, individuals, professionals really utilize legal tech, so that's the origin of the word Foco. So we are a B2B, enterprise focused company and most of our products are consumed by enterprises. We have a whole suite of automation as well as AI products, and we will cover some of these things as we go on through the podcast as well. But you know, since we started Poco, we've had a whole bunch of different people across the world not just enterprises utilize our products as well. So this is really what drives us into doing all of these things, and it's a unique combination, where this is led by a founder who has domain expertise and it's combined with a lot of data sciences as well, to make it a whole set of very useful products.

Speaker 2: 9:53

Anything to add to that group? I think you have pretty much covered everything. I would like to ask you a question Sure, so what is the so? You have tagline accelerating businesses to light speed. What do you have in mind?

Speaker 1: 10:10

So basically, this came very early in the life of PooKo. So I was demonstrating to a financial institution, saying if they use certain document automation within their processes, they can sort of really cut down the time that they use. At the same time, they brought in a document and they asked me to sign. Literally it was an NDA, versus so many other things as well. It was 80 pages of signatures. So I said if you had used a product, you could have done a one click. And that's where I simply said look, this is so slow, you wish that there could be some acceleration to light speed. So that's how the timeline actually. We decided to adopt it and finally even register the trademark for it. But you know, that's the. That's the solution. Yeah, that's an interesting one, but you know we've got. You know, just to talk on that group, we now have more than nearly 18 to 20 products across a whole bunch. Plus we have a unified platform. How do you think the tech journey has been at Foco?

Speaker 2: 11:31

Can you just talk about that as well? When we started, I think the focus was always on using technology, in the sense that we already started adopting and using extensively the machine learning models to be incorporated into the applications. We wanted to ensure that the manual processes could be automated as much as possible and using AI we could extract the documents, deal with a lot of PDF documents or Word documents etc. Extract information and give reports on a like as fast, as you said rightly said light. So that's exactly how the focus has been from the beginning. And then we, as you know, we started with our contact management system and then we, as you know, we started with with our contact management system, and then we had an NDA and then we started with. So basically, all the requirements that were coming were actually fed by the customers. They were all always taking into consideration the requirement of customers, how we can solve their problems, etc. Correct.

Speaker 1: 12:37

And that also leads us to another thing which we face quite a bit. We've got a whole host of products. Most companies have one. How do you manage all of these things? I mean, this is something that you and I face every day, correct, whether you're talking to a customer or whether you're talking to people who are interested in the company, and so on. So this keeps coming up and it's like this.

Speaker 1: 13:05

Most companies or most products, especially in the legal tech space, usually have, say, contract management in mind or one single portion of this, and that's sort of like viewing the world in monotone and it's a whole hue of different things that come together. Let's take an example. Let's say you're an in-house lawyer. You need to draft documents, you need to be able to collaborate with your external teams to be other legal teams, say law firms on matters or other contracts. You keep getting NDAs and other things that you need to review or send out and keep track of. You also need things like contract management, where you need to set.

Speaker 1: 13:56

You know, working as a non-consul means liaising with at least 10 to 12 different functions and people just going through the workflows. You need to have a very robust system Also keeping track of hundreds of contracts that keep coming your way is another thing. Getting it signed is so critical. Without proper signature and also the documentary evidence are supported in different countries becomes we face this issue right, where people will say if you have a matter or contract going to the foreign court, is this something which your platform supports? Absolutely yes. So these are some of the things that come up Apart from signing. Document storage is so critical and day-to-day you get hundreds of contracts to review.

Speaker 1: 14:51

Let's say you're an in-house counselor, people will be after you to be able to give reviews of 50-page documents in 10 minutes time. That's the expectation. You need to be able to cope up with that. Adding more people doesn't necessarily solve the problem always. And let's say you're doing a memory transaction for your company. These usually come under.

Speaker 1: 15:17

Let's say you're doing a lemonade transaction for your company. Let's say also if you are a transaction lawyer, you have 20 deals at any point and that you may be working on over a six-month period. What happens then? You have to look through term sheets. You have to drive documents. You have to check for takeover code. If it's a public company, you have to look through term sheets. You have to drive documents. You have to check for takeover code. Uh, you know, if it's a public company, you have to do competition law reviews. So, uh, you know you need software to be able to sort of like guide you through all of these things.

Speaker 1: 15:47

Compliance is another major thing that keeps coming up as well. Also, you know, lawyers of all hues need to be able to track the different changes across sectors. Let's say let's take the case of India. Let's take, for instance, fema, foreign Exchange Management Act. I'm pretty sure the other day there is something new there. Just keeping track itself is a huge thing which AI can take over. And also, assuming that you are an in-house sponsor, you also need to keep your audience in mind. You can have people. You'll be interacting with different people within the organization.

Speaker 1: 16:31

They can be sales guys, they can be marketing guys and they'll ask you a bunch of questions right From hey, how do I do this? Can you review documents for me to buy a house? All sorts of things come up like this, right. So you know you need to be able to sort of handle situations like these and you need to be able to sort of, and you wish that there was some AI that can assist you with all of these things, that can automatically answer, also with the aid of AI. You know, if you have a reasonably sized organization, a fast-growing organization, you have thousands of documents to keep track of, correct, and you want to be able to draft your own documents. You know, and you should also be able to sort of. You know, print those documents, get a response back, things like this. That means you need to have your own data sets, you need to have your own LLMs, things like this.

Speaker 1: 17:28

Now, why am I being so long-winded about all of these things? Can you imagine one piece of software doing all of these things? That was an exceptional effect, yeah, and if you expect that there will be like one thing that people focus on to do this, it really is not the case and if of a legal function's job in an organization is about reviewing contracts. Maybe 2 or 3% is litigation, 2 or 3% is regulatory matters and the rest may be like IP. Oh, by the way, you forgot IP as well. Ip is something that keeps coming up and we also have a product in this regard. But I'm just saying that if you really look at you, look at all of these things, and that also makes us very different and very relevant is because we have the domain expertise right as a company to really understand what all things yeah, and it's an evolving landscape, isn't it right?

Speaker 1: 18:40

you know you've had cases, uh, I mean, you want to talk about thousands of users and hundreds of countries that come up, all of this. You want to see how complexities can come and how we've been able to successfully, sort of like, also suggest some of these things as well.

Speaker 2: 18:58

Yeah, for example, for some of our deployments that we have done in. You know we have done the deployments for more than 30 countries and the complexity in ISL. You know all these 30 people from 30 different countries. They come and they need to talk to each other. They create documents that they need to get signed. They want to find the documents anytime anywhere in the world. So these are all challenges. Another thing is that there are people from different languages, different countries, so that also becomes a situation.

Speaker 1: 19:34

I think I think you know, I remember many, many times that gurus had to speak in French, several of these things as well, and I've had to, I've had to support in so many other things as well, but you, anyway, I think language is a huge thing, isn't it? People still would like to talk to other people and get things done. Negotiations, collaboration becomes so relevant, so it's all these things as well. Let's move away from, say, foco and all of these things to what are the latest trends in AI that you see? Guru, you and I discussed this pretty much very few on a daily basis. What do you think? What are you seeing which are most interesting?

Speaker 2: 20:22

So, if you look at the requirements of customers or, in this field, what we deal with, we deal with a lot of documents and now these documents need to. You need some place to store them right and from time to time you want to be able to search and bring up a particular document.

Speaker 1: 20:38

I want to add to that thought You've got NAS devices or storage or cloud to do all of these things right. Isn't that sufficient to do you? To basically store documents?

Speaker 2: 20:50

so the problem with that chetan? Is let us say you're dealing you're big company, you're dealing with multiple customers and different types of contacts get signed and you want to store them. You know the typical way that we do on in our windows machines or on macs, etc if you're someone like me always goes to outlook or some whatever program that you're doing.

Speaker 2: 21:09

Nowadays we use extensively cloud, you know, on OneDrive or Google Drive, etc. The problem is you want to get one document and it takes you half an hour or one hour to even just search and find it. Then the so that that one hour or half an hour is basically the time that you want to spend much more. Does it really take that much time Sometimes? Sometimes it's very difficult to find documents. You might even not be able to find it in a day or a couple of days, or you might just lose track of where the document was and you just keep searching. It happened to me multiple times. So one of the problems that we have. It actually solves that problem. So we use AI to index the documents we ensure that all the documents have. We can search through the documents using advanced search options, different types of searches.

Speaker 1: 22:00

Exactly Seven different kinds of semantic searches and things like that. Yes, so this is just one example of one particular use case.

Speaker 2: 22:11

Now, let us say the users want to create documents the way they always have created. For example, I've been in this company, or a team of lawyers has been in this company for more than two decades or three decades Now. They have a certain style of writing documents or agreements, and these agreements or contract documents uh, so if new blood comes right, you want to be able to, to carry out that style of writing the contracts now, which is not possible because you know you have the transition and you need to guide them, be behind them for a very long time.

Speaker 1: 22:47

But why can't you just use ChatGPT to draft out documents, because that's what people always ask us, right Saying now ChatGPT is there, why do I need? I mean, is there anything more beneficial than ChatGPT?

Speaker 2: 23:03

and what do you think? Yeah, basically, if you look at ChatGPT, it is trained on open source data In the sense that the documents that have been created by different people, different locations in the world, etc. If you create a document using ChatGPT, it gives you a generic document that might have the required features and you need to re-query and query, etc To get all the clauses in the document. But you know, what I'm talking about is a certain style of writing that you want to adopt because this has been a brand, or this is the way that we always have used the language. Particularly the employees want to use a certain language to create documents. You can basically create models using AI today that can mimic your style of creating documents. That can basically continue the style or the brand, or you know the particular extra thing that you have in your company when you create new documents using AI.

Speaker 1: 23:59

Basically, your company secret module is something that you can sort of use. That's exactly.

Speaker 2: 24:07

Yeah, if you want to look at another use case which is very powerful and very sought out today is that you want to be able to talk to your documents, right? So you have a storage of 10,000 documents. Now you want to find out when a particular document is created when it is going to expire, et cetera. Now, if you want to go back, or even, for example, with the senior people moving out of the company and new or burnt entering into the company, you don't have a history of the documents.

Speaker 1: 24:40

It's a bit spooky as well when you think about it, and what Guru is talking about is, you know, maintaining the history and the legacy of why and what happened during a company's lifetime.

Speaker 1: 24:57

You know, and why certain decisions? Because we face this all the time, especially, you know, in countries across the globe, especially with customers right across the globe, especially with customers right. There's always I think it's a time of transition as well, where one generation is taking over the other generation and so on, and there is so much information that needs to be transferred correct and especially in places like legal, it becomes even more difficult. And I'll tell you why. Because if you have been a member of an institution for a very long period of time, you have institutional memory as to what happened during certain times contracts, events and so on. Let's say, now you you have the technology to be able to sort of like keep track of all these things, but still, let's say, some newer people come in an organization and people come and perhaps people leave as well.

Speaker 1: 25:58

There is no continuity in an organization. So we often encounter people who have been there for literally decades and there are people who come in and leave an organization within one, two, three years or four years. What happens during that time? If you don't use technology correct, one institutional memory is destroyed, which is very difficult for an enterprise to recover from, correct. Secondly, you know to keep track of what's happening generally within the company. What were the discussions? Things like these, today's technology, especially, you know, when you use custom elements and things like that really are able to solve or bridge this gap. Right, I mean, let's not get into a very technical discussion on how all these things are achieved, but perhaps for another podcast, but make the point saying you know If you want to maintain institutional memory.

Speaker 1: 26:51

I think this type of AI is very interesting. When you listed out quite a few things you maintain semantic searches and repositories. Then you talked of intelligent drafting using custom LLMs. We talked of maintaining custom data sets and custom LLMs in the context of institutional history and memory. So there are many use cases like this and these are all difficult, I mean, even from an engineering standpoint. Right? I mean, we've encountered so many issues which we have been able to sort of surpass. Right, it's not as simple as well. I'm going to upload something to chat GPT and then it will tell me it's a lot more than that and when, at least, we've been able to sort of like, build out and overcome certain critical engineering problems that way. But that's for another day.

Speaker 1: 27:52

I mean, if you ask me, the latest thing which a lot of people find very fascinating is the auto-redlining feature. If you're a lawyer and you have some comments coming in and there are some plugins which you auto-review and auto-redline a document, in reality, from an engineering perspective, it's not difficult. You don't opt to redline a document. In reality, from an engineering perspective, it's not difficult. You have to do some of these things. One of the things is, once again, you know you need to be able to use it with your own data to make sense. If you use public LLM, you know or even a noted LLM, say, seven or 8 billion parameters and then try and use it against your company's data, you might not always get the same results. Let's say you have some custom playbooks, but you've always drafted agreements in a particular manner. Now these are different from an engineering standpoint.

Speaker 1: 28:58

These need to be hooked up in certain ways to be able to achieve the exact result that you are looking for. But it's an interesting thing. I think a lot of people what they do is they hook up to Word SDKs and then Microsoft Word SDKs and hook it up with the redlining feature, with the chat GPT option, but that really doesn't necessarily always solve the problem. It just, in fact, just exacerbates the problem and after a while you're going to go back and edit it yourself and things like that. I think there is a level depending on whether you're a legal professional or whether you are in a different function. But looking at legal, some of these things should not be recommended as well, isn't it? Maybe great, but to think about it, if you use some public LLM with a redlining feature and word in the law firm person then becomes is the law firm actually? Who is the person who is commenting on this? And there are certain bars, bar associations, that have taken certain views in this regard as well. But yes, it can be achieved, and things like that. But this for me, is both fascinating and worrying at the same time. I'm speaking, I'm just wearing my lawyer's hat some of these things as well, but you know, I think we've talked about this quite extensively. Also, just to recap on all the things that we talked about we talked about why we started the podcast.

Speaker 1: 30:47

We talked about the company, how it came about and what it's. You know what we're doing, the different products that are there, how they impact the customers that we service and what their outlook is. We also talked about trends in AI, the fascinating things that both of us liked or, in my case, also didn't like. These are some things. What can we expect, guru, in the next podcast? What do you think?

Speaker 1: 31:29

You've got to keep this running. Okay, no, no, okay, no, no, okay. You can say that in the next series we'll have a lot of eminent people coming in who are subject matter experts in their own domain.

Speaker 2: 31:44

Right, we talk to them about all of these things. You can just say and a lot more to come as well. Anything else that you missed? I have a twist. Uh, I probably want to ask you why, uh, you know why legal has been a laggard in an update? Not at all. That will just kill the company.

Speaker 1: 32:08

Okay, you know, because lawyers don't like to hear it's like, uh, it's like a diabetic saying you can't eat sweets. Okay, it's like you know, it's one of those things saying, if you keep telling that I'm like don't eat, don't eat right now, just explode. So you should. Why? I say that? I mean it's. You can't say it's a laggard, because all functions are laggards and the main thing is money. If you can make five thousand dollars for a customer, why would you take five dollars next? Right, so you're just challenging the hegemony, so don't do that, okay, so, and you know, one other place he said laggard, okay, so this is the second part earlier. Okay, so this is the second part. Now you ask me. So I've asked you what you can expect and you paused it.

Speaker 2: 33:08

Now you have the end of the podcast. Three, two, one go. I think let's make it much more interesting. Let's have you know we have planned more some people coming from different industries who can talk and share their experiences, you know, in the space of digital tech and stuff. So I think those are some of the sessions we're going to have in the next few weeks.

Speaker 1: 33:27

Okay, so stay tuned, viewers, and look forward to some very exciting sessions, and thank you for your time and your audience. Thank you, oh, okay, it went. Thank you, same moment. Let both of you face. Should we do it again? It's fine in the other step, but next time, next time. Also, one more thing Many AIs are coming, so I think it's a good idea to have a meeting with them.

Speaker 2: 33:53

I think it's a good idea.

Speaker 1: 33:54

Face action should we do it again? But next time also one more thing anyway, I think we've got quite a few things. Yeah, how is it he was no, I think it's quite well, I think yeah you must have a great organization.

Speaker 2: 34:30

you are very initially. You are a little bit why. What happened? Some of the questions you asked, or Besides points, have not come Okay. Some of the things that I explained, some of the jargons we need to use when you were summarizing.

Speaker 1: 34:43

Yeah, we have used jargons like LLMs and things like that Correct Without actually explaining what is an LLM, but that's okay. There's too much information. We assume that the average listener already has some information and understanding of all of these things as well.

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Chetan Nagendra

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