How can lawyers connect with clients in the AI age? 8am’s Kaleidoscope shares some ideas
Lawyers want to save time and money, and they increasingly want to use generative artificial intelligence to do it.
Jeff Hughes, the CEO of 8am, tapped into these needs during his opening keynote at the professional business platform’s Kaleidoscope conference last week. Held from Sept. 22-24 in Las Vegas, it attracted lawyers and legal and business professionals from more than 30 states as well as Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
“Why are you guys here this week? Why did you make the trip?” Hughes said in the keynote on Wednesday. “I expect it comes down to a couple of reasons. And this is probably the first one on your mind: The profession is changing faster than ever. Obviously, AI is at the center of that.”
AI was a hot topic among Kaleidoscope’s dozens of sessions, which covered practice and the profession, technology and innovation and the business of law. 8am, which owns a suite of products designed for lawyers and accountants, including MyCase and LawPay, also offered demonstrations and strategy sessions and access to other technology partners.
As part of its offerings at Kaleidoscope, 8am introduced MyCase MCP, a model context protocol connector that allows users to connect with Claude; it also introduced enhancements to IQ, its suite of AI assistants.
‘How is it made so I can understand the technology?’
Whitney Thomas, a probate, estate planning and guardianship attorney who has her own practice in San Antonio, attended Kaleidoscope because she is a longtime user of case management platform MyCase and wanted to explore other available products and solutions.
“There are so many demands that come from running a practice, especially as a solo, and we have to use technology as much as we can in order to keep up,” says Thomas, who launched her firm three years ago. “So I came here for that, and I also came here to learn how AI is taking us for a spin and how we can use it to better our practice.”
Thomas, who is also a member of the ABA Standing Committee on Lawyer Referral and Information Service, was interested in Kaleidoscope’s sessions on digital marketing strategies. She noted that a few recent clients, including one who was initially pro se, found her through searches using AI.
Sharon Glancz, a media and entertainment lawyer from Los Angeles, hadn’t used any of 8am’s products but heard about Kaleidoscope through a Nevada legal newsletter. Glancz, who is licensed in California and Nevada, plans to open her own firm in January and wanted to take advantage of billing and business development sessions as well as networking opportunities.
Glancz has experience managing AI but hasn’t decided how she plans to incorporate specific products into her firm.
“I know AI, and that’s also going to be part of my practice,” says Glancz, who finds it important to ask legal technology vendors how everything works. “My questions are: What AI do you use? Are you training on it? Is it proprietary? Do you use ChatGPT or another LLM model? How is it made so I can understand the technology?”
Josh Fox, the founder of Foxlaw in Brisbane, Australia, handles property law and wills and estates for his clients. Also not an 8am customer, he wanted to attend a legal conference in the United States to learn more about AI and other developments in the profession, and he came across Kaleidoscope after doing a search using the AI chatbot Grok.
“There are certain trends that happen in America, and then we see that same thing play out in Australia, but maybe six months later,” Fox says. “Just as someone who likes to at least try to be on the front foot and be an early adopter of things, that was part of the attraction.”
While Fox hoped to learn more about using AI for document automation and other administrative tasks, he noted that he wants to find the right balance between relying on technology to increase efficiency and maintaining a strong connection with his clients.
“If we all just adopt everything that’s thrown at us, before we know it, we’ll be practicing in such a different way to what we have,” Fox says. “I think that kind of touches on the whole distinction between law as a business and law as a profession.”
Jesse Cole, the owner of the Savannah Bananas, a barnstorming baseball team that plays under modified rules to encourage showmanship, entertainment and fan participation, shared similar thoughts during his opening keynote Thursday.
While 8am acknowledged Cole probably doesn’t spring to people’s minds when they think about legal conference speakers, he discussed how he used a “fans first” mentality to turn a small-town baseball team into a global phenomenon that has millions of fans waiting for tickets.
“What are the main friction points?” Cole asked during his speech. “That’s what we started looking at with baseball. Too long. Too slow. Too boring. You get nickel-and-dimed. And that’s the starting point of innovation.”
Cole added that if lawyers wanted to have a better practice, they couldn’t just ask themselves how to drive business or how to market more effectively. “It’s what are those friction points that regular people hate, and how do you eliminate those? That’s where you start,” he said.
He encouraged lawyers to find better ways to connect with their clients, including by looking at their entire experience, from the first impression to the end of the matter.
“Map it out and say, ‘Is this remarkable, or is it the way it’s always done?’” Cole said. “Is there any way one of your clients could say, ‘You wouldn’t believe what my attorney did today, and it had nothing to do with solving a challenge.’”
Editor’s Note: 8am paid for the reporter to travel to the conference.
See also:
Legal professionals feel ‘miserable’ over admin tasks, new 8am report shows
Legal tech companies make a play for more sports deals
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