Meeting Title: Harvey AI Sales and Implementation Discussion Date: 2025-12-16 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Rick
WEBVTT
1 00:01:21.730 ⇒ 00:01:22.959 Rick: Hey, Robert, how are you?
2 00:01:23.790 ⇒ 00:01:25.440 Robert Tseng: Hey, Rick. Good, how are you?
3 00:01:26.080 ⇒ 00:01:26.680 Rick: Good.
4 00:01:27.640 ⇒ 00:01:34.499 Robert Tseng: Good to meet you. Yeah, thanks, thanks for, the warm message, and I’m glad we got to set up some time.
5 00:01:34.500 ⇒ 00:01:36.559 Rick: Yeah, no problem, man. Thanks for reaching out.
6 00:01:36.790 ⇒ 00:01:38.799 Robert Tseng: Yeah. How do you know Chris?
7 00:01:39.390 ⇒ 00:01:41.659 Rick: He was my housemate in San Diego.
8 00:01:41.870 ⇒ 00:01:42.790 Robert Tseng: No way!
9 00:01:42.790 ⇒ 00:01:43.750 Rick: Yeah, yeah.
10 00:01:43.920 ⇒ 00:01:51.969 Rick: So, I’ve known Chris for a long time. We went to the same church, as well. Okay. Sorry, I’m trying to find if there’s, like, a light here, but I can’t find it.
11 00:01:52.730 ⇒ 00:01:57.619 Rick: We got these new, like, pod, like, pods where you can take calls in.
12 00:01:57.620 ⇒ 00:01:58.290 Robert Tseng: Okay.
13 00:01:58.290 ⇒ 00:02:01.559 Rick: And it’s just like, I’m just trying to figure out the… how do you work it for…
14 00:02:01.560 ⇒ 00:02:02.650 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, take your time, yeah.
15 00:02:02.650 ⇒ 00:02:04.160 Rick: No, no, it’s fine. We’re good.
16 00:02:04.160 ⇒ 00:02:12.729 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool, yeah, no, I, Chris and I were coworkers, oh, 6 years ago?
17 00:02:12.730 ⇒ 00:02:13.570 Rick: Oh, okay.
18 00:02:13.570 ⇒ 00:02:24.999 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, time flies. Yeah, we were both at a then-Series A startup. I think he was employee, like, 17 or something, and I was, like, 22 or something like that.
19 00:02:25.000 ⇒ 00:02:25.450 Rick: Oh, nice.
20 00:02:25.450 ⇒ 00:02:29.080 Robert Tseng: We have a logistics, tech space, call flow space,
21 00:02:29.270 ⇒ 00:02:43.659 Robert Tseng: And then, yeah, I kinda… Do you guys have an exit? No, no, I mean, he left when we got to, like, 120 people post-Series B. I stayed until Series C, and then they couldn’t raise after that, so…
22 00:02:43.930 ⇒ 00:02:49.280 Robert Tseng: Yeah, things kinda… plateaued out, and I… I went… I went somewhere else.
23 00:02:49.280 ⇒ 00:02:50.790 Rick: Yeah, fair enough. So…
24 00:02:50.790 ⇒ 00:02:55.739 Robert Tseng: Yeah, now I… I run a… I run a consultancy,
25 00:02:56.240 ⇒ 00:03:07.739 Robert Tseng: yeah, I guess we’re… we’re in the data and AI implementation kind of world, and I thought you did really great writing on legal… legal AI specifically. Personally, I’m actually doing part-time law school,
26 00:03:07.740 ⇒ 00:03:08.470 Rick: Oh, okay.
27 00:03:08.470 ⇒ 00:03:14.429 Robert Tseng: which has kind of been wild. This is my first semester, my last finals tomorrow, and all that, and…
28 00:03:14.430 ⇒ 00:03:15.020 Rick: Oh, wow!
29 00:03:15.190 ⇒ 00:03:31.650 Robert Tseng: Yeah, just this, like, intersection of legal, tech, and… I don’t know, there aren’t that many people in this world, so when I saw, like, kind of your content, I was like, I want to reach out and just get to know your story, and how you found yourself into this kind of role.
30 00:03:31.650 ⇒ 00:03:37.119 Rick: Yeah, yeah, so I was a lawyer for, like, 14 years, I… Yeah.
31 00:03:37.460 ⇒ 00:03:50.949 Rick: was in San Diego, I was at Perkins, Cooey, and Morrison & Forrester, and then I moved to HP. I was in-house in Singapore, and then, spent some time in Seoul, South Korea, at a company called Coupong, also just, like, doing compliance stuff. And then.
32 00:03:50.950 ⇒ 00:03:51.330 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
33 00:03:51.330 ⇒ 00:03:54.459 Rick: I took a year off. I had, you know, when we moved abroad, we had
34 00:03:54.920 ⇒ 00:03:59.030 Rick: We had zero kids, and then we had 3 kids by the time we were done in Korea, and then.
35 00:03:59.030 ⇒ 00:03:59.720 Robert Tseng: Wow.
36 00:03:59.720 ⇒ 00:04:16.739 Rick: Yeah, so we decided that we were gonna just take some time off, and so we took us, like, a sabbatical year. We traveled, with the kids, and then, and then during that time, it was like, you know, ChatGBT, and, like, what it means for, like, different professions, including the legal profession.
37 00:04:16.790 ⇒ 00:04:31.500 Rick: And I was like, hey, like, it makes sense, like, lawyers deal with a lot of documents, a lot of words, like, this is text-based, it makes plenty of sense. Yeah. And then, yeah, and then I just kept googling companies, and Harvey kept coming up, and then…
38 00:04:31.540 ⇒ 00:04:37.019 Rick: connected with, someone who, one of my friends in Singapore.
39 00:04:37.490 ⇒ 00:04:51.729 Rick: you know is one of the folks here, one of the earlier joiners here, and we got connected, and then one thing led to another, and now I’m on this team that basically is… on the pre-sale side, we work with law firms and in-house teams to essentially… Yeah.
40 00:04:51.730 ⇒ 00:05:04.070 Rick: demo and pilot and help sell, right? I think it’s easier for a lawyer to speak lawyer to sell, rather than, like, an account executive from, like, a Datadog background to, like, try to sell a legal product, because, you know.
41 00:05:04.240 ⇒ 00:05:05.900 Rick: You know, it’s different, right?
42 00:05:06.230 ⇒ 00:05:06.780 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
43 00:05:06.780 ⇒ 00:05:08.260 Rick: So, yeah.
44 00:05:08.600 ⇒ 00:05:15.160 Rick: That’s really kind of how we got into it. It wasn’t like a… it wasn’t well thought out, it wasn’t like a strategy, it was just kind of like…
45 00:05:15.700 ⇒ 00:05:24.499 Rick: things fell into place, I ran out of money when I was traveling, I needed a job, so, you know, this was a job that I was like…
46 00:05:24.580 ⇒ 00:05:35.939 Rick: Either it’s a skill that I learn, and it becomes a career, or it sucks, and then the company fails, and it’s still a skill that I learn that I can bring to my next job, so…
47 00:05:36.300 ⇒ 00:05:37.430 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, that’s…
48 00:05:37.430 ⇒ 00:05:37.860 Rick: wasn’t…
49 00:05:37.860 ⇒ 00:05:47.880 Robert Tseng: different being on the sales side now, as opposed to, I don’t know, with, I’m sure, being… I mean, I’ve never practiced being a lawyer, but from what I’ve gathered, it’s… I mean…
50 00:05:48.650 ⇒ 00:05:54.240 Rick: 100%. It’s very different, and… but it’s, like, fun, because I think for me, like.
51 00:05:54.390 ⇒ 00:06:11.690 Rick: The practice law is fine. It is, you know, it is detail-oriented, it’s… it’s stressful, especially practicing a law firm. But here, it’s like, it takes a lot of that out, to be honest. Like, it’s just… Yeah. I’m doing a demo, like, I’m trying to sell the vision, I’m trying to sell the future, right, to these teams.
52 00:06:12.010 ⇒ 00:06:26.819 Rick: And, you know, it’s more consultative, and so for me, it’s kind of fun, right? Because it’s like, what’s your problem? How can we figure it out? Like, how can we solve with AI? Maybe we can, and that’s fine too. Maybe we can’t today, but maybe we can tomorrow. And that’s the exciting part, so…
53 00:06:27.180 ⇒ 00:06:46.720 Robert Tseng: Yeah. There are a couple other things that you mentioned. I feel like I could take this in so many directions. One, I feel like I’m a few steps behind you, but personal life-wise, I just got married a couple years ago. Congrats. My wife and I also want to move to Asia and have our first kids there, so… Okay. Like, I would love to just pick your brain on, like, kind of your journey there, and then back, but I’ll keep it more professional.
54 00:06:46.720 ⇒ 00:06:47.700 Rick: No, no worries!
55 00:06:47.700 ⇒ 00:06:51.549 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and I’m curious, like.
56 00:06:51.680 ⇒ 00:06:59.509 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, you were talking about, kind of, selling the vision to law firms. I mean, like, my whole… one of my theses for joining, like.
57 00:06:59.670 ⇒ 00:07:01.849 Robert Tseng: going to law school is that, like.
58 00:07:02.090 ⇒ 00:07:17.240 Robert Tseng: I mean, the long tail of my career, like, I want to be doing services work. I mean, a little… a little bit of background. I graduated college, I was in full-time ministry for a couple years, and then, you know, thought I was going to go and kind of go down clergy or whatever, but I ended up not, and…
59 00:07:17.250 ⇒ 00:07:32.630 Robert Tseng: you know, I think there’s just something about just connecting with people, solving problems, like, I think I have some aptitude around that, which is why now I run a services company. Yeah. And, like, I think legal, especially public interest world, like, you know, I want to be doing something in there eventually.
60 00:07:32.720 ⇒ 00:07:40.299 Robert Tseng: But now, like, I’ve… now that we’re ready for it, like, our… our portfolio is pretty much, like, you know, half just, like.
61 00:07:40.810 ⇒ 00:07:49.639 Robert Tseng: SaaS, that’s all kind of adjacent to AI at this point. And then we have, like, another bucket that’s just, like, all services, different kinds of services. Some health services.
62 00:07:49.880 ⇒ 00:07:53.190 Rick: Some, like, I mean, even home services we work with.
63 00:07:53.190 ⇒ 00:08:12.679 Robert Tseng: And for me, I’m like, I wanna… I would like to work with, like, lawyers, and we’ve put together, like, a couple cool, like, paid demos, you know, this was kind of, like, last year when everyone was still, like, eager to try things. I do think, like, AI adoption’s kind of hit this, like, wall, like, the sell… the sell… the selling has changed, I think, from my perspective, last year was this year.
64 00:08:12.770 ⇒ 00:08:30.240 Robert Tseng: And I think kind of what you alluded to, I mean, you… you are, like, the SWAT team brought in to sell a vision, you know? And, like, you have that, like, in-house expertise to do that, whereas I’m more kind of, like, systems integrator, kind of tech… tech provider. I help you choose, like, the right selection of tools, and then we kind of design for a very specific workflow.
65 00:08:30.240 ⇒ 00:08:41.020 Robert Tseng: And, you know, that… that hook is not, like, landing as well nowadays with, like, in these, like, specialty services. I think a lot of people have been going after them. So, I’m just curious, like, you know.
66 00:08:41.020 ⇒ 00:08:58.670 Robert Tseng: I know Harvey doesn’t really do partnerships, like, I’ve approached your team before in the past, so we’ve, like, we don’t really… I’m not… I don’t really know if that’s really the angle, but I’m just curious, like, from… if you have… if that’s consistent with what you’re seeing in terms of, like, how you’re selling, Harvey, and, like, I don’t know if you’ve had any… any, like, direction that you can…
67 00:08:58.670 ⇒ 00:09:01.440 Robert Tseng: You know, for somebody that’s interested in, kind of.
68 00:09:01.490 ⇒ 00:09:06.169 Robert Tseng: selling to… to law in some way? Like, how… how you… any recommendations you would have there?
69 00:09:06.400 ⇒ 00:09:07.459 Rick: Yeah, I mean, I think…
70 00:09:08.290 ⇒ 00:09:12.119 Rick: Yeah, I… you know, 3 years ago, they were talking about, like, what is the best
71 00:09:12.440 ⇒ 00:09:24.099 Rick: video conferencing software to use, like WebEx or Zoom, and then now, obviously, they’re like, what can AI do for me? And, like, what’s the ROI, what’s the KPI, right? I think we’ve gone to the point where, like, they’re very sophisticated… more…
72 00:09:24.170 ⇒ 00:09:41.579 Rick: I wouldn’t say very, like, who’s very sophisticated? Nobody, because it’s really new, right? But you’ve got innovation heads, innovation leads, KM people, knowledge management, CIOs, who are, like, who’ve been brought on from PwCs, consultancies, BCGs of the world, to, like, figure out how to implement AI for law firms, because
73 00:09:41.640 ⇒ 00:09:59.209 Rick: At the end of the day, law firms are very profitable, and if they could squeeze out more profitability with innovation, why not, right? And so, I think for law firms, it’s interesting, because you have to be very prescriptive, right? Like, you are extremely rewarded for specialty, like, if you know…
74 00:09:59.210 ⇒ 00:10:18.120 Rick: 7 items for the tax code, you will be treated like a king. And so, like, that’s hard, because it’s like, well, what if the software you’re selling doesn’t do that? Your AI isn’t so good at that, because ultimately it’s predictive. Then it’s not useful for that partner. And then, does it become useful for any other partners? And then it becomes kind of a cluster, right?
75 00:10:18.130 ⇒ 00:10:26.529 Rick: Yeah. And then I think for us, like, for me, I like selling in-house teams, because, like, in-house teams aren’t really about perfection, they’re about 90%, 95%, risk tolerance.
76 00:10:26.530 ⇒ 00:10:27.830 Robert Tseng: It’s my business.
77 00:10:27.860 ⇒ 00:10:36.020 Rick: we need to make a business decision. What is our risk tolerance to make this decision? It’s not scorched earth. It’s not 100% risk-free, like, that’s what we.
78 00:10:36.020 ⇒ 00:10:36.380 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
79 00:10:36.380 ⇒ 00:10:51.090 Rick: counsel to do. What we do in-house is business decisions that are based on our best judgment at the current time, that we can then go and justify it in court or whatever if we need to. And, like, for me, that is where legal AI is going to land better, because.
80 00:10:51.090 ⇒ 00:10:55.560 Robert Tseng: It’s, like, not… it’s not… it’s never gonna be perfect. Like, they keep saying, like.
81 00:10:55.560 ⇒ 00:10:58.830 Rick: You know, the hallucinations are a feature, not a…
82 00:10:58.830 ⇒ 00:10:59.759 Robert Tseng: Not a bug.
83 00:10:59.760 ⇒ 00:11:02.779 Rick: For a law, it’s a… it’s a bug. It’s a bug.
84 00:11:02.780 ⇒ 00:11:03.390 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
85 00:11:03.390 ⇒ 00:11:18.779 Rick: Yeah, for in-house teams, it’s less of a bug, right? It’s more of a, okay, like, ideation, whatever, you can spin it, right? Yeah. And so, yeah, and we’ve not gone the partnership route. I think what Harvey has decided to do is, like, we’re gonna sell our internal motion. We have PwC as one of our
86 00:11:19.140 ⇒ 00:11:28.130 Rick: base clients, and we co-sell with them. Yeah. And it’s probably because some legacy agreement that we had with PwC, but PwC is the only
87 00:11:28.420 ⇒ 00:11:40.399 Rick: Coastal Motion, and Harbor something. We announced them the other day. Harbor Freight… I wanna… I don’t say Harbor Freight, because I think they sell hardware, but, like, Harbor something? Yeah. They… they do some sort of, like,
88 00:11:40.890 ⇒ 00:11:45.289 Rick: they’re, I don’t know, they’re, like, in with a bunch of, like, in-house teams, whatever.
89 00:11:45.450 ⇒ 00:11:45.780 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
90 00:11:45.780 ⇒ 00:11:54.349 Rick: It’s just called Harbor? Harbor Business Consulting Services. Okay. Yeah, we just announced some kind of partnership with them, where they’re kind of…
91 00:11:54.920 ⇒ 00:12:02.479 Rick: kind of doing what you’re doing, right? Like, bringing together a suite of products to help legal teams, but, you know, now with
92 00:12:02.610 ⇒ 00:12:07.359 Rick: you know, Harvey, they’re focusing a bit on the Harvey angle. I don’t know, like, it’s really…
93 00:12:07.590 ⇒ 00:12:09.170 Rick: I literally have no idea, because…
94 00:12:09.170 ⇒ 00:12:09.790 Robert Tseng: Sure.
95 00:12:09.960 ⇒ 00:12:12.730 Rick: Those aren’t my emotions, my emotions are really just, like.
96 00:12:12.910 ⇒ 00:12:15.010 Rick: You know, like, real, kind of.
97 00:12:15.660 ⇒ 00:12:21.220 Rick: net new in the pipeline. We build them from demo to pilot to… to sale.
98 00:12:21.820 ⇒ 00:12:22.390 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
99 00:12:23.680 ⇒ 00:12:25.980 Rick: Yeah, sorry, that was… I don’t have the answer to your question, that was, like, a lot of information.
100 00:12:25.980 ⇒ 00:12:30.519 Robert Tseng: Oh, no, yeah, no, that’s great insight. I appreciate that. I think, like.
101 00:12:30.700 ⇒ 00:12:41.569 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I… it helped me better get a better sense of, like, your role, kind of positioning, kind of confirming some of the things that I had… I had mentioned. Yeah, I guess, like,
102 00:12:42.090 ⇒ 00:12:43.300 Robert Tseng: So…
103 00:12:43.340 ⇒ 00:12:53.499 Robert Tseng: I mean, even with the, the bar for, like, in-house, perhaps is a little bit lower than firm, and that, you know, is fine, because, like.
104 00:12:53.500 ⇒ 00:13:06.530 Robert Tseng: like you said, they think that the tech is good for that? Is there, like, a certain… so, just to give you an idea, like, we’ve done a couple, you know, PI firms are, like, the easiest ones for us to reach out to, you know, they’re just a lot more scrappy, more open to working with, like.
105 00:13:06.530 ⇒ 00:13:16.059 Robert Tseng: they are… they kind of operate like product companies, often, under the hood. So, we’ve built a couple things for them that are, you know, more, you know, obviously just different
106 00:13:16.060 ⇒ 00:13:34.319 Robert Tseng: you know, GPT wrappers of, like, doing, medical record retrieval and, like, summarization and stuff like that. Nothing, like, complex workflow that we can really put together in, like, a real demo that’s not, like, super costly for us, so obviously that, I mean, your team, I’m sure you’d be able to, like, build something really custom for… for our firm.
107 00:13:34.320 ⇒ 00:13:38.040 Robert Tseng: I’m, I’m curious, like, Yeah, are there, like…
108 00:13:38.560 ⇒ 00:13:48.069 Robert Tseng: are there… what’s, like, the threshold for, like, a buyer? Like, I don’t know, is there, like, a market… I mean, I don’t want you to… I don’t want to compete with you, but, like, if there’s… if there’s a buyer that, like, you’re not…
109 00:13:48.220 ⇒ 00:14:03.230 Robert Tseng: that you feel like is just not a good fit for you, that, like, has a lower threshold, that, like, they don’t need Harvey, but, like, maybe they could use, you know, some enhancement. Maybe it’s, like, a mid-size firm, like, or smaller, or… I’m not really sure. Yeah.
110 00:14:03.230 ⇒ 00:14:06.220 Rick: Yeah, I mean, that’s… that’s, like, that’s interesting, because, like, we… Yeah.
111 00:14:06.360 ⇒ 00:14:11.259 Rick: starting with the largest enterprises, like the biggest law firms, Amloft, 100, whatever.
112 00:14:11.260 ⇒ 00:14:11.900 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
113 00:14:11.900 ⇒ 00:14:19.670 Rick: And then to the Fortune 500, Fortune 1000, Fortune 2000, and then now we’ve kind of even scaled down to, like, SMB, so when we say.
114 00:14:19.670 ⇒ 00:14:20.889 Robert Tseng: Oh, really? Okay.
115 00:14:20.890 ⇒ 00:14:28.449 Rick: Because we had a mid-market team. Mid-market was basically 5,000 employees or under, and then SMBs is basically 5… 5 seats or under.
116 00:14:28.680 ⇒ 00:14:33.699 Rick: Wow. So, like, TurboTax type, like, click through, like, you know, click through and…
117 00:14:33.790 ⇒ 00:14:50.380 Rick: go ahead, here’s your license, good luck. You don’t get any training, you don’t get my… you don’t get legal support, like, you know, technical, you know, know-how support, you can watch a couple videos, join a couple webinars that we have once a week or twice a week, to learn how to use Harvey generally, but that’s the… that’s the only support you get.
118 00:14:50.730 ⇒ 00:14:51.200 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
119 00:14:51.200 ⇒ 00:14:56.640 Rick: And so, we’ve… yeah, that’s a new motion that we’re starting next… next quarter.
120 00:14:56.850 ⇒ 00:14:59.030 Robert Tseng: Yeah. I don’t know how it’s gonna go, like…
121 00:14:59.480 ⇒ 00:15:08.050 Rick: It’s interesting. Because, like, look, I think ultimately, like, any legal… well, any Gen AI, right, it’s…
122 00:15:08.560 ⇒ 00:15:22.720 Rick: context is… is the most important part of it, right? If it doesn’t know how you draft, or how you negotiate, or how you do things, like, it’s just gonna be generic GPT-ish responses. So, like, being able to incorporate systems into
123 00:15:22.760 ⇒ 00:15:37.710 Rick: where, you know, your answers reside, like, they… in-house teams, they reside in people’s heads, on people’s local desktops, on email Outlook from 5 years ago, from, like, storage big drives, etc. Like, this knowledge is not in one place. Like, that’s the messy part, right?
124 00:15:37.710 ⇒ 00:15:38.460 Robert Tseng: But… Yeah.
125 00:15:38.460 ⇒ 00:15:58.109 Rick: I wish, if you were to start a new law firm, like, you could have a beautiful DMS that’s tagged, that’s best-ofs, these are our exemplar documents, blah blah blah, and start over, and, like, folder them, and, like, be able to be very efficient, and being able to find the things that you need to find, but that’s not how, obviously, legal teams have been built, and so…
126 00:15:58.110 ⇒ 00:16:08.050 Rick: That, I think, is the tough part for any legal product, is to find every single bit of context that’s going to be important for their business decision, so…
127 00:16:08.050 ⇒ 00:16:08.640 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
128 00:16:09.220 ⇒ 00:16:24.260 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I mean, I think, that’s very much, like, we view AI as an extension of a data problem, which is really just get everything into one place, you still have to do the cleaning, you don’t have to structure it as much as you used to, but you still have to have some structure, and some sort of, like, you know.
129 00:16:24.320 ⇒ 00:16:41.440 Robert Tseng: scoring, prioritization framework to feed into the model, and then it’ll… then you’ll get the outputs that you like. So, yeah, I mean, it’s very much like the same consulting kind of motion across every service and industry that we work in, so, that’s why I felt like it was… it could be a good, good way to break into legal.
130 00:16:41.590 ⇒ 00:16:44.130 Robert Tseng: Yeah. I think that’s an interesting motion. Go, go ahead, yeah.
131 00:16:44.130 ⇒ 00:16:51.279 Rick: No, I was saying, I don’t know if it’s interesting, but, like, we… we’re just selling software. Like, we don’t sell services. Like, we’re not selling…
132 00:16:51.390 ⇒ 00:17:00.769 Rick: like, a consultancy service to be like, hey, we can help clean up your data, we can help put your data in a vault, we can help put your data in a blah blah blah, like, we can help you build a workflow.
133 00:17:00.770 ⇒ 00:17:03.419 Robert Tseng: It’s all with PLC, and that’s why, like, they do that part, right?
134 00:17:03.420 ⇒ 00:17:06.200 Rick: Yeah, but I think that’s a huge…
135 00:17:06.579 ⇒ 00:17:12.589 Rick: market, right? That marginalized is massive. And, like, I guess, yeah, like, we don’t technically have to
136 00:17:12.940 ⇒ 00:17:21.909 Rick: Only if PwC brings us the deal do we have to kind of not talk about post-sales support. We have our own post-sales support team, that’s actually free and inclusive.
137 00:17:21.910 ⇒ 00:17:36.450 Rick: And actually, part of the package, right, for kind of large enterprises, you get your own dedicated customer success manager, your own legal product specialist who will do more of the trainings, like, once a month, or once every few months, whatever. And that’s… they don’t charge for that.
138 00:17:36.490 ⇒ 00:17:49.889 Rick: I feel like we should charge for that, because I think that’s where the margins are, because I think you buy a shiny tool, people are excited for the pilot, want to end up buying it because the pilot went well, but then it just kind of sits somewhere and, like, no one uses it and doesn’t innovate again. Yeah.
139 00:17:49.970 ⇒ 00:17:54.409 Rick: That’s the big problem, and I think the problem there is, like, adoption, and then being, like.
140 00:17:54.540 ⇒ 00:17:55.060 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
141 00:17:55.060 ⇒ 00:18:14.060 Rick: So all it does is a parlor trick. It’s just like, oh, look, it summarizes 50 documents and compares them across each other. So cool. I use that once a week. Like, that’s not… I don’t think that’s success. I think success is building, like, an operating system where you’re like, it’s the first thing I open at 9, the last thing I close when my day’s over, because I can do everything end-to-end in one platform.
142 00:18:14.490 ⇒ 00:18:21.129 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I saw that recent release of the whole shared space concept. That was cool. Kind of felt like Figma for lawyers.
143 00:18:21.130 ⇒ 00:18:27.759 Rick: I don’t even have access to that. Like, when we were doing it on the screen, it was all fake. Like, I was… they were just like.
144 00:18:28.420 ⇒ 00:18:33.370 Rick: There’s nothing. I was like, well, I wanna… now I wanna demo it to, like, folks, like, we don’t have anything to demo, and I’m like, great.
145 00:18:33.370 ⇒ 00:18:33.810 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah.
146 00:18:34.290 ⇒ 00:18:36.800 Robert Tseng: But I see the vision, yeah, yeah, okay.
147 00:18:36.800 ⇒ 00:18:50.379 Rick: Yeah, look, that’s the stickiness, though, right? That’s, like, the ecosystem. If, you know, we just sold to Walmart, and, like, Walmart now has told 400 of their outside counsel, if you want to continue being a Walmart outside counsel, you need to buy Harvey.
148 00:18:51.080 ⇒ 00:18:51.540 Robert Tseng: That’s what…
149 00:18:51.540 ⇒ 00:18:55.449 Rick: That’s when you know that, like, it’s become a thing, right? It’s like…
150 00:18:55.690 ⇒ 00:19:00.070 Rick: You are now so necessary as part of this ecosystem that.
151 00:19:00.270 ⇒ 00:19:02.020 Robert Tseng: Yeah. See if they’re forcing their…
152 00:19:02.050 ⇒ 00:19:03.959 Rick: Outside counsel to buy.
153 00:19:04.230 ⇒ 00:19:04.770 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
154 00:19:04.770 ⇒ 00:19:05.230 Rick: So…
155 00:19:05.230 ⇒ 00:19:05.990 Robert Tseng: Okay.
156 00:19:05.990 ⇒ 00:19:06.530 Rick: Yeah.
157 00:19:07.440 ⇒ 00:19:17.449 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, if I can just take one more, one more, one more thing on this. Yeah, of course. Yeah, with the smaller, I mean, even your mid-market, let’s say, like, the smaller end of your mid-market or your higher SMB, like.
158 00:19:17.450 ⇒ 00:19:32.730 Robert Tseng: you know, if they’re going to self-serve themselves on Harvey, like, I mean, I’ve worked with so many PLG tools, we work with all kinds of tools, it never works, which is why, like, professional services kind of is there, because, like, in order to, like, move something from, like, the sign-up that you get to, like, actually
159 00:19:32.730 ⇒ 00:19:38.400 Robert Tseng: Being something that they can adopt like that, that is kind of where, you know, teams like mine are able to be effective.
160 00:19:38.400 ⇒ 00:19:40.120 Rick: Yeah. I’m curious, like, where…
161 00:19:40.120 ⇒ 00:19:52.860 Robert Tseng: if you have any leads on, like, the… where the pilot kind of just, like, dies. And, like, to me, that’s kind of an opportunity to… to be, like, at least to position my… to my… position my team and be like, look, we… we want to… we want to target people who
162 00:19:53.150 ⇒ 00:20:10.740 Robert Tseng: you know, I mean, we’re not going after the, like, you know, the Amwallite 100 or the Ford 500s, but the people who, like, are trying to, like, adopt this tech that they’re… that they just… they can’t… they can’t really, like, bring it from pilot into… into… into operational workflow. So, that’s a… that’s a good client for me.
163 00:20:11.140 ⇒ 00:20:17.710 Rick: Yeah, that’s interesting. Because, like, I think for, like, most lawyers, like, they’ve been practicing for a long time without Gen AI.
164 00:20:17.930 ⇒ 00:20:18.340 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
165 00:20:18.340 ⇒ 00:20:25.719 Rick: And, like, they’re like, well, I don’t want to learn something new, like, I… the old way was fine. Like, it’s fine. Like, you’re gonna say you saved me an hour a day, like, I don’t…
166 00:20:25.930 ⇒ 00:20:30.960 Rick: That just means more work. So, like, why do I need to save that hour a day? So I think part of that is, like, a mindset shift.
167 00:20:31.300 ⇒ 00:20:31.690 Robert Tseng: Hmm.
168 00:20:31.690 ⇒ 00:20:36.549 Rick: Like, now that, like, law school students are getting access to, like, Harvey and other things… Yeah, they’re.
169 00:20:36.550 ⇒ 00:20:38.269 Robert Tseng: next semester. Yeah.
170 00:20:38.270 ⇒ 00:20:40.780 Rick: Exactly, so… Oh, you’re getting it next semester?
171 00:20:40.780 ⇒ 00:20:41.630 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think so.
172 00:20:41.630 ⇒ 00:20:42.730 Rick: What law school are you at?
173 00:20:42.730 ⇒ 00:20:43.530 Robert Tseng: Boredom.
174 00:20:43.530 ⇒ 00:20:46.030 Rick: Okay, cool, I didn’t know we’d worked with Fordham, that’s great.
175 00:20:46.030 ⇒ 00:20:49.669 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so that’s awesome. So, getting them while they’re young…
176 00:20:50.060 ⇒ 00:20:57.259 Rick: getting them to, like, use it and demand it, and then, like, understand how to use it and the limitations of it, I think that is key to, kind of, the next
177 00:20:57.370 ⇒ 00:21:00.580 Rick: Growth phase, right, of the adoption.
178 00:21:00.960 ⇒ 00:21:01.920 Rick: process.
179 00:21:02.270 ⇒ 00:21:02.810 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
180 00:21:03.350 ⇒ 00:21:09.490 Robert Tseng: I Okay. Yeah, no, I think this is… this is good, good food for thought.
181 00:21:10.110 ⇒ 00:21:15.839 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think we’re… we’re kind of retooling, kind of heading into the new year. Yeah, I think I just…
182 00:21:15.950 ⇒ 00:21:22.750 Robert Tseng: We went a lot wider this year than I thought we would. Like, I didn’t expect to kind of, like, kind of solve all these different angles, and
183 00:21:22.830 ⇒ 00:21:42.220 Robert Tseng: We kind of were just, like, saying yes to a lot of business, and so I think it’s… it’s cool. So definitely people… yeah, that whole, like, how do we get real ROI out of our… out of, like, our AI investments? We’ve jumped into so many situations where, like, a chief AI officer or, like, some tech senior folk is, like.
184 00:21:42.220 ⇒ 00:21:48.300 Robert Tseng: You know, received this directive, tried to, like, you know, throw some ideas on a dartboard, but, like, didn’t know how to actually implement.
185 00:21:48.300 ⇒ 00:21:53.059 Rick: Yeah. And then in Q4, they’re like, oh shoot, we need to show that we did something.
186 00:21:53.060 ⇒ 00:21:59.969 Robert Tseng: And then we got, like, brought into so many projects this quarter to just, like, at least get them something that they could show.
187 00:21:59.980 ⇒ 00:22:15.169 Robert Tseng: And I’m like, wow, like, that’s… that’s… that’s the climate that we’re in now. So, and I’m just, like, wondering, like, yeah, like, well, I mean, I’m… I… I would like… I still… I still bet, like, I want to bet that, like, we can sell into… into legal somehow,
188 00:22:15.220 ⇒ 00:22:24.109 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t know, if you… if you were, you know, if you were in my… if you’re in my shoes selling services, that were, like, tech-enabled or tech-adjacent, like.
189 00:22:24.180 ⇒ 00:22:27.609 Robert Tseng: Do you… what would you… what would you be thinking about?
190 00:22:27.610 ⇒ 00:22:34.410 Rick: I think that’s a good space, like, to be honest, and I’ve thought about that, too. I’m like, I think the margins are good, like, but you need to get people who are, like.
191 00:22:35.010 ⇒ 00:22:48.260 Rick: I don’t know, like, you’d have to probably poach people who, like, are A&O Sherman, or, like, who’ve actually used it, who’ve lived it, and who would actually, like, actually show value in implementing. I think that’s why Harvey did it well, like, our sales motion started with…
192 00:22:48.590 ⇒ 00:22:54.909 Rick: Or included, like, using real lawyers, right? Like, who can speak lawyer. I think for…
193 00:22:55.110 ⇒ 00:23:04.540 Rick: for, like, a… yeah, like, building, like, a consultancy team of, like, fully fluent AI users. It doesn’t have to be Harvey, it could be any, like, be, like, PT, like, they’re…
194 00:23:05.000 ⇒ 00:23:10.099 Rick: folks on LinkedIn, like, building their own, like, vibe coding, like, Harvey and stuff like that, which is…
195 00:23:10.120 ⇒ 00:23:27.700 Rick: so cool, right? Like, finding those, like, savants. Like, that’s what you’re gonna find, like, you… yeah, we go farm wide with Latham, but, like, honestly, are all 2, 300 Latham attorneys gonna be using Harvey Avery? No. You’re gonna find, like, 20 lawyers who are, like, savants, and just, like, I get it. I’m gonna build workflows, I can build playbooks, I can, like…
196 00:23:27.700 ⇒ 00:23:37.010 Rick: do really cool stuff. If you can get those people to be part of your consultancy, and like, be like, dude, like, go out and teach people how to do it, like, that’s a market, I think. That would be really, really cool.
197 00:23:37.470 ⇒ 00:23:38.060 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
198 00:23:38.320 ⇒ 00:23:44.500 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so that’s kind of a bet for myself. It’s like, if I stay in school long enough and I actually go through this, like, maybe I’ll be that, you know?
199 00:23:44.500 ⇒ 00:23:44.970 Rick: Yeah.
200 00:23:44.970 ⇒ 00:23:45.660 Robert Tseng: But…
201 00:23:45.660 ⇒ 00:23:46.970 Rick: 21 years ago?
202 00:23:47.330 ⇒ 00:23:51.100 Robert Tseng: Well, it’s like a 3-year thing, so… Oh, okay. Three more years, so… I mean, I don’t know.
203 00:23:51.100 ⇒ 00:23:52.260 Rick: time or part-time?
204 00:23:52.260 ⇒ 00:23:55.250 Robert Tseng: It’s part-time, yeah. Or it’s, like, three and a half, so.
205 00:23:55.250 ⇒ 00:24:06.930 Rick: Why? And your colleagues, you know, look, you’re… the Fordham Law students that are with you in your class, like, you guys are gonna use Harvey next semester, starting next semester, like, look, it’s not, like…
206 00:24:07.240 ⇒ 00:24:08.970 Rick: It’s not rocket science, like.
207 00:24:08.970 ⇒ 00:24:09.440 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
208 00:24:10.010 ⇒ 00:24:11.829 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I’ve built so much stuff, yeah.
209 00:24:11.830 ⇒ 00:24:17.819 Rick: Yeah, it’s not fucking, like… like, sorry, it’s not, like… it’s just a pretty interface that…
210 00:24:17.820 ⇒ 00:24:18.220 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
211 00:24:18.220 ⇒ 00:24:30.309 Rick: takes the mystique and mystery out of using AI, out of lawyers, and then, like, it reduces prompt burden a little bit, it tidies up the prompting, you don’t have to be as precise, like, that’s fine. But it’s not… it’s not…
212 00:24:30.310 ⇒ 00:24:39.119 Rick: it’s not such a huge mode. I think the mode is collaboration, though. I think once that builds in, and you have in-house teams basically saying, adopt Harvey, or you’re no longer Walmart’s.
213 00:24:39.140 ⇒ 00:24:44.279 Rick: you know, outside counsel. I mean, that becomes an oh-shit moment for a lot of law firms.
214 00:24:44.750 ⇒ 00:24:45.310 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
215 00:24:45.450 ⇒ 00:24:59.430 Robert Tseng: Yeah. If I ask one more question, I don’t… for legal work, how siloed is it? Like, I know data work pretty well, and I realize, even as I run a data team and, like, driving AI adoption, it’s hard, because people are used to just working alone all the time, and so…
216 00:24:59.430 ⇒ 00:25:12.970 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I didn’t really realize that. I mean, we’ve been trying to… we’ve made some dents there, but, like, I’m just like, well, different types of work, those that are most collaborative, they’re the… those are the best ones to be disrupted by AI, because there is a lot of communication being passed back and forth.
217 00:25:12.970 ⇒ 00:25:16.390 Robert Tseng: Yeah. I mean, I wonder what that’s like for, like, legal, yeah.
218 00:25:16.390 ⇒ 00:25:25.600 Rick: It depends, like, I think, like, how old the company is, like, I keep going back to Walmart because I led the Walmart pilot, right? So, like… Okay.
219 00:25:26.210 ⇒ 00:25:34.789 Rick: like, compliance has their own DMS, has their own place they put, like, things, like, there’s SharePoint, there’s Google Drive, there’s their own internal systems, like…
220 00:25:34.810 ⇒ 00:25:46.659 Rick: their own bubble, like, there’s, like, yeah, and then personal desktops, and when do you sync that, and like, you know, like, backup tapes, like, whatever, like, literally, like, so much stuff. And then that’s just compliance, and then you have…
221 00:25:46.660 ⇒ 00:26:03.799 Rick: regulatory that does something completely different. Like, they don’t have a standard process of doing… they don’t have a standard way of sharing, etc. So, like, I think for, like, law firms, it’s actually not so bad, because they have, like, iManage, right, or, like, these, like, general legacy DMSs that they use, and they’re pretty… and they want a system of records, so therefore they are very, like.
222 00:26:04.090 ⇒ 00:26:05.840 Rick: They’re pretty, like,
223 00:26:06.640 ⇒ 00:26:24.259 Rick: disciplined about it. But, like, in-house teams are just whatever, it’s just kind of like, we’re just gonna save it wherever, it doesn’t matter, like, it’s in my inbox, someone will find it, someone will… whatever. They’re less so, right? So, I think for in-house teams, it’s more scattered. Law firms, there’s better hygiene, but, like… Yeah. But not for… and then, like, in-house teams also, like, there’s Slack, and then there’s…
224 00:26:24.450 ⇒ 00:26:36.579 Rick: CRM software, there’s Salesforce, you know, you name it, SAP, Aribo, whatever, like, all these things that they’re doing, from a procurement, from a contracting perspective, the CLMs they have too, like, that is, like, a whole mess of stuff.
225 00:26:36.610 ⇒ 00:26:52.799 Rick: Right? Because they have, they could have… they could have… they could have Ironclad with a Google Drive integration, but also some people using Drop, or, like, Box, or whatever, and then they also have, like, a SharePoint for their ethics and compliance, like… like, there’s, like, so much stuff, and then they’re all using Slack to talk to each other as well. Like, it’s just, like.
226 00:26:53.410 ⇒ 00:26:56.150 Rick: Like, how to ser- how do you surface all that, right?
227 00:26:56.150 ⇒ 00:26:56.720 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
228 00:26:57.040 ⇒ 00:26:57.650 Rick: I don’t know.
229 00:26:58.300 ⇒ 00:27:03.689 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I think that’s… yeah, that makes sense. I mean, those are the same things we’re seeing, so… it makes sense.
230 00:27:03.690 ⇒ 00:27:08.089 Rick: Yeah. Well, how long have you been doing this for, and how big’s the team?
231 00:27:08.090 ⇒ 00:27:14.120 Robert Tseng: It’s been almost… almost 3 years. We’re about… we’re about 20 people right now.
232 00:27:14.120 ⇒ 00:27:14.860 Rick: Wow.
233 00:27:14.860 ⇒ 00:27:15.720 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah.
234 00:27:15.720 ⇒ 00:27:16.070 Rick: Exciting.
235 00:27:16.520 ⇒ 00:27:21.470 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, it’s been good. I… yeah, I… I think I’ll keep it going.
236 00:27:21.470 ⇒ 00:27:21.890 Rick: Yeah.
237 00:27:21.890 ⇒ 00:27:26.230 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and yeah, but we’re in New York. What church do you go to?
238 00:27:26.240 ⇒ 00:27:31.960 Rick: We are not really in the pro- we have not really found very much, like…
239 00:27:31.960 ⇒ 00:27:32.450 Robert Tseng: Okay.
240 00:27:32.450 ⇒ 00:27:35.559 Rick: If you’ve got some recommendations, let us know. Like, we’re out in Forest Hills.
241 00:27:35.560 ⇒ 00:27:42.570 Robert Tseng: Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, my wife’s coworker, good friends from Forest Hills. We just visited there not too long ago.
242 00:27:42.570 ⇒ 00:27:43.870 Rick: Oh, nice. Where do you guys live?
243 00:27:43.870 ⇒ 00:27:46.040 Robert Tseng: Yeah. We live in Columbus Circle.
244 00:27:46.040 ⇒ 00:27:46.430 Rick: Oh, nice.
245 00:27:46.430 ⇒ 00:27:49.819 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, so I think we just… we just take the E and go all the way down.
246 00:27:49.820 ⇒ 00:27:50.699 Rick: Oh, that’s nice.
247 00:27:50.700 ⇒ 00:27:52.030 Robert Tseng: Yeah,
248 00:27:52.540 ⇒ 00:27:57.739 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then, yeah, church-wise, we go to church in the city, it’s in Manhattan. Yeah, you’ve heard of it.
249 00:27:58.130 ⇒ 00:27:58.830 Rick: Cool.
250 00:27:59.620 ⇒ 00:28:05.610 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, I appreciate, appreciate the time. No worries. Yeah, you gave me a lot of food for thought,
251 00:28:05.800 ⇒ 00:28:09.209 Robert Tseng: Should let you know if I have any other questions, but yeah.
252 00:28:09.210 ⇒ 00:28:09.560 Rick: Yeah!
253 00:28:09.560 ⇒ 00:28:10.150 Robert Tseng: It’s good.
254 00:28:10.430 ⇒ 00:28:18.929 Rick: Happy to talk, you got more… happy to stay connected. Yeah, let me know if I can be of any other help, like, you know, it’s fun, it’s an interesting space.
255 00:28:18.930 ⇒ 00:28:19.420 Robert Tseng: Okay.
256 00:28:19.420 ⇒ 00:28:23.619 Rick: I think it’s ripe for disruption. We’ve been saying that for years, though, so…
257 00:28:23.620 ⇒ 00:28:24.060 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
258 00:28:24.060 ⇒ 00:28:25.100 Rick: We’ll see what happens.
259 00:28:25.580 ⇒ 00:28:27.799 Robert Tseng: Okay, sounds good. Cool. Thanks, Rick.
260 00:28:27.800 ⇒ 00:28:28.330 Rick: Alright, man.
261 00:28:28.330 ⇒ 00:28:29.209 Robert Tseng: Alright, take care.
262 00:28:29.250 ⇒ 00:28:29.820 Rick: Bye.
263 00:28:29.820 ⇒ 00:28:30.290 Robert Tseng: Right.