Episode 13 of The Applied AI Podcast
Jacob Andra and Adam Wardel discuss AI adoption in the legal industry
About the episode
Law firms face a civil war over AI adoption. On one side, a model that's worked for decades, generating revenue and establishing power structures. On the other, an intelligence revolution that won't disappear in ten years.
In this conversation, Talbot West CEO Jacob Andra sits down with Adam Wardel, an attorney with 12+ years of experience spanning in-house and law firm roles. Adam sits on Talbot West's advisory board, where he brings legal and compliance expertise to the firm's AI transformation work.
Jacob founded Talbot West to help organizations navigate AI transformation with a focus on architectural thinking and vendor-neutral guidance. The firm specializes in helping mid-market and enterprise organizations move beyond fragmented AI pilots toward what Jacob calls "total organizational intelligence."
The conversation digs into the real tension inside firms right now. Most firms treat it as glorified software. Subscribe to a tool, check the box, move on. But that approach misses the point entirely. Adam makes the case that AI should be thought of as an actual intelligence working alongside you. Not a dashboard you log into. Not another SaaS product adding to your tech sprawl. Adam emphasizes that law firm leaders need to bring in people smarter than themselves on this topic. The best approach is to surround yourself with people who understand the technology deeply, then provide oversight based on your experience with the practice of law.
Jacob stresses that this outside expertise must be vendor-neutral. If your technology advisor represents specific platforms, they'll recommend those platforms whether they fit or not. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The value of independent guidance is the ability to evaluate the full landscape and recommend what actually makes sense for your firm, even if that means telling you not to buy something.
Talbot West maintains this independence precisely because architecture decisions have million-dollar consequences and firms need advisors without conflicts of interest. They explore why governance frameworks are necessary but not sufficient. Many firms think they've "figured out AI" because they've subscribed to a tool and put a governance policy in place. But that's just the beginning. Governance establishes how your organization will ethically, intellectually, and operationally use AI. It's the foundation. The competitive advantage comes from what you build on top of that foundation.
Adam raises something else worth considering. Attorneys have some of the highest rates of divorce, alcoholism, and depression of any profession. AI adoption isn't just about efficiency and competitive advantage. It's about whether this work can become more sustainable for the humans doing it. The technology exists to take routine cognitive burden off attorneys' plates. The question is whether firms will embrace that possibility.
One insight that stands out: we're still thinking about AI through the lens of traditional SaaS. This product, that product, this login, that login. But the paradigm of the future decouples functionality from interface. Talbot West calls this "invisible AI." Intelligence runs in the background. It surfaces touchpoints only when needed. The old model of managing multiple tools gives way to something more integrated and seamless. You don't log into AI. AI is simply embedded in how work gets done.
Jacob makes a crucial point about competitive advantage. If a solution is easy, everyone will adopt it. It becomes table stakes. The firms that pull ahead are the ones doing the harder work of architecting comprehensive systems, understanding dependencies between workflows, and building capabilities that compound over time. That's not something you can buy off the shelf. It requires strategic thinking about where your firm is today, where it needs to be in two years, and how each decision along the way builds toward that future state.
The principles here extend beyond the legal industry. Any business facing AI adoption will grapple with the same questions. Do you solve narrow problems and accumulate tech sprawl? Or do you architect organizational intelligence from the ground up? The legal industry just happens to face these questions with particularly high stakes, given the ethical obligations, privilege concerns, and client confidentiality requirements that constrain what's possible.
Adam and Jacob agree on the fundamental shift required. Stop thinking of AI as software. Start thinking of it as intelligence that augments your organization's capabilities across every workflow. That mental shift changes everything about how you approach adoption, integration, and governance. Firms that make this shift now will build compounding advantages that late adopters cannot easily overcome.
Episode transcript
Welcome to the Applied AI Podcast. I'm your host, Jacob Andra. I really enjoyed this conversation because Adam is not only an attorney, but he's an AI enthusiast and he speaks very eloquently on the intersection of the two. We talk about how AI applies to law firms, but the same principles we discuss apply to any company in any industry.
Jacob Andra:
I have with me Adam Wardell, a very smart guy in the intersection of artificial intelligence issues and legal practice. Adam, why don't you tell us about yourself.
Adam Wardel:
This is really great to be here. Thank you, uh, for inviting me. I've been practicing law for more than 12 years now, and I've done it in a variety of, in-house versus law firm experience. Uh, and right now. I, I have the, the privilege to act as general counsel, uh, to, to companies that do focus on artificial intelligence in different ways, just fascinating from, from a day-to-day perspective.
Jacob Andra:
Yeah, it's really great to have you on. Why don't you say a little bit about what your main practice areas are, um, that you're covering in both your general counsel as well as past, uh, law firm experience, and along with that, maybe a high level overview of how AI has played or is playing into your practice of law.
Adam Wardel:
I have been fortunate, uh, to, to focus my, my career that, that started, uh, you know, very, very unconventional working for a division of Credit Suisse Bank and, and focusing on that kind of. Uh, banking and finance, uh, compliance there. I was general counsel at a company called Simplus here, uh, in Salt Lake City it enabled me to be with people who were very forward and progressive thinking on technology. Simplus was a technology consulting company and I've been able to be general counsel for other technology and innovation companies, that notion of being forward thinking and embracing the changes in, in technology as they come, as opposed to being afraid of it, really has guided me to my philosophy on artificial intelligence today. I found a way to utilize certain artificial intelligence tools in my work. Uh, and, but I have also a way to help, uh, the companies that I'm general counsel for to, to not only become from a governance perspective, but also to help them go out to market and actually offer solutions with real results to the clients. And to do that in a way that is compliant and thoughtful and safe. I think that artificial intelligence is supposed to be something is not just glorified software, and it's not supposed to be thought of as just sophisticated software tools. It is supposed to be an actual intelligence that sits next to you and brings, uh, a new level of sophistication and a new level of success to the business.
Jacob Andra:
A good entry point might be this provocative idea that you told me, which is that there is a civil war going on right now within law firms as relates to legal tech and adoption of ai.
Adam Wardel:
I believe that artificial intelligence is one of the more disruptive to the legal industry and, and that kind of staunch old way of practicing law then we've had in a very long time. The Civil War is more of a complexity of ideology, and uh, it is, how do I maintain the model that has served well, made a lot of money, uh, created a lot of, of power framework for, for lawyers and the legal industry, how do we accept that change is coming? Artificial intelligence is not a fad. It is not something that will go away, uh, in 10 years time. And how do we, as attorneys, do we learn to not just embrace artificial intelligence, but utilize it to actually better represent people, to bring access to justice, to bring efficiencies to the practice of law? But also make our lives perhaps a little better. Attorneys have some of the highest rates of divorce, alcoholism, depression, uh, and that can be, believe, effectuated and changed with the adoption of an actual artificial intelligence that will bring change.
Jacob Andra:
I love that approach and that philosophy. That's a great vision. And you were also mentioning sort of an. Internal conflict within firms and within the legal tech space about whether to adopt specialized legal tech platforms or more generalized large language model type of solutions. I'd love to hear your, your take on that whole, uh, internal conflict and how you see that playing out.
Adam Wardel:
Lawyers are guided by a very strong set of ethical rules. Um, and they're called the model rules, and there is. In fairness to a lot of my colleagues who may not agree with what I'm saying today, there are duties that we have in the legal field, uh, that if not taken seriously, if not followed, uh, could cost us really everything we've built up, uh, you know, there's, there's of competence and confidentiality and, uh, uh, the unauthorized practice of law. Uh, you know, professional judgment, those kinds of things. There, there is a good, discussion, a healthy discussion going on as to whether or not utilizing an artificial intelligence might violate, some of those ethical rules. what I think is important to take a step back, maybe even just take a breath, in and, and understand that the, the, the idea here is that. You, you as an attorney, and I mean me as an attorney, I suppose I should, I should say, is it's important that we adapt and change by saying we are not, we, we are not changing the way that we as the attorney practice law, we're using a tool that in is sophisticated, it is its own intelligence, to provide. A better practice of law to our clients to provide better explanation, more transparency, not not less transparency if it's used properly.
Jacob Andra:
I would even say, you're providing much more value. To the client.
Adam Wardel:
Yeah, I, I, I would absolutely agree. It's much more value because what you're giving them is so much more in depth than just one person can know at a given time. And so you and, and me as the lawyers, we need to think of ourselves more as. Strategic thinkers. We're not just there to do a little task and move on. And what we're there now is we're there to think deeper and provide so much more. For every dollar that is put into, into the practice of law, we can provide so much more back with the help of artificial intelligence. So I wanna frame it, I wanna shorten it down to. I am not talking about turning over the practice of law to artificial intelligence. What I'm talking about is, learning to work in conjunction with that so that we can provide so much more value and so much more to clients that we couldn't do before.
Jacob Andra:
In many ways, you could almost equate it as analogous to having a paralegal or something like that.
Adam Wardel:
Yeah, and I, I think that. Having a paralegal, but, and, and, and sometimes they're called legal assistants. Paralegals, you know, depending on the framework, uh, of whether you're an in-house or a law firm. the, the idea there is that, uh, having those roles does not violate. the rule, the ethical rules, and it, and it doesn't impede a lawyer from being a good lawyer. And it's the same thing here, having a well organized law firm or in-house, de department and being able to be much more efficient and much more competent and effective in what you're doing is, is just, you know, clients will flock to you because they're going to say, you know what, not only. Is he able to offer better representation at a lower cost? But, uh, you know, I, he, he can do it in a way that actually makes more sense. I, I, I really do believe that the utilization of artificial intelligence will help bridge that gap sometimes between attorneys who have a hard time communicating with. With business owners and business leaders and, uh, e even people in the community about complex legal issues in a way that can be more simplified down. And I think that those of us who will embrace this will, will quickly overcome the competitors.
Jacob Andra:
I a hundred percent agree that with that, it's going to be such a big competitive advantage for the firms that get ahead of it, and so speak from the perspective of A CTO or some sort of head of a major law firm that is grappling with this AI thing, and let's say they're very progressive and so they really actually want to get ahead of this and embrace it. What's the optimal way for them to do that? And I'll outline a, a, a few different paths, and these are not mutually exclusive, so that it could, it could be a combination of these. So one is to go down the kind of legal tech SaaS offering path where you're subscribing to Harvey or you end up with a few different tech platforms in play that cover different areas of your, your workflow. Um, one is just to go all in on like a generalized large language model solution where, uh, maybe you bring it in-house and you make it super compliant so you can upload client data and it's all secure and SOC compliant and all of that, but you're not really going on in on the, um, specialized legal tech platforms. You just want a large language model that you can use for a wide range of purposes. So more of a generalist approach. And then a third approach, it would be, you know, potentially working with a firm like my firm, Talbot West to architect a very comprehensive plan that spans departments, it spans workflows, and it's looking more at how do we integrate the firm. Say you're putting yourself in the place of this executive that wants to get on board. What's the best way for them to do that? And it can be a combination of these.
Adam Wardel:
The best way to do it is to bring someone in smarter than you to implement it. It's hard sometimes for attorneys who get higher up, uh, in, in the echelon of their career and in their profession. They, you know, they, they actually do acquire a, a bit of knowledge there and they're, and they're kind of used to doing things a certain way and it works. Uh, and it's hard for them to be told that they really don't know what's going on or what they're talking about. But it is true here. So one of the things that I, I always say is surround yourself with people who are far better at it, and then go and, and actually implement it with, with your oversight, with your, you know, with that experience you've gained to get where you are today. I think law firms should have a CTO. And if they don't, they should get one. and I think someone like, like Talbot West there, I think they easily could come in and supplement or even take over that for, you know, for adoption of, of, of artificial intelligence to say, Hey, listen, we're, we're here to listen to not only what you need, but we have the expertise to tell you what you may not even know you need. From there, we can work together to provide a real solution. So this is, I'm gonna end it with, I, I don't think that. Law firms or, or, or in-house counsel, uh, departments should spend a lot of time on, on what I call the small or individual solutions, uh, uh, you know, a tool that just, you know, does one thing, uh, calendaring or, you know, reviewing discovery or, you know, just, it solves one little problem that they have to go through. I really do believe that. That will not only cost a lot more, but it will slow down the progress. It's more important to bring in a firm that will say, okay, tell me about your practice. What are the tasks that everybody has to deal with, and give me the full list. If the list is a hundred long, that's fine. Give me the full list of a hundred things that we need to get done during the day that may get in the way of really utilizing the attorney's time, or the employee's time well, and let's create an intelligence that will solve all of that, that will do all of those things for you, or as many of them as we can. and I think that that's a much better way to think about it than trying to just say, oh, I've got this problem. Let me just go find a solution to it. Uh, it, you know, think a little bigger, think a little broader, and get everything solved.
Jacob Andra:
So many good points in there. So first of all is this idea of human in the loop, that if you architect out a complex set of workflows. AI is not gonna do all of those for you and there will be gradation. So there may be one substantial part of a workflow where you can build it to be 90% ai, 10% human, and then with another segment of the workflow, that ratio might be flipped. And somewhere else it might be 50 50. But the point is, you're executing according to a master plan versus just going in and trying to solve a narrow problem. And so if you look at maybe a spectrum here, and on one end of the spectrum, you are very myopically focused on one specific efficiency, and you end up with a lot of tech sprawl doing that, by the way. Um, tons of dashboards, tons of inefficiency introduced. And on the other end you're literally a architecting what we call organizational or workflow intelligence, more end to end. There's a lot of in between. So you get these legal tech platforms, harvey's a great example where instead of doing just one thing, they'll do a basket of things that are sort of related to each other. And so then there, that's better than just solving a, a tiny solution, right?'cause now you have a group of related things that it is starting to create that workflow, but it's not super well integrated with maybe other parts of your workflow. So you're ending, you're still ending up with tech sprawl, but maybe not quite as much. And the point is there's not one right answer to all of this. The point is to architect the whole thing out and map it so you actually know what your options are and what the ROI is of going down different paths. And often the optimal path is some sort of a hybrid, but you've gotta do the research to know.
Adam Wardel:
And you need to be guided to, to find those paths and those variables. I can't overemphasize enough that really. That partner of that firm or that general counsel, they'll have a good idea what these lists are and what things, you know, we can do. But at the same time, uh, you need to bring somebody else in. From the outside, they've got the technical expertise, they have expertise helping and assisting other firms and other companies, and they can help you better define that scope. So doing a really key advisory and scoping before, you know, I call it hands on keyboard work, uh, is going to not only save money and time, but it's going to give you the result you actually need for you and I and I, I think it's really critical.
Jacob Andra:
And it's important when you're bringing in a partner like that, that they don't have vendor bias. If that technology expert is coming in, but they're actually representing a specific set of technologies or a specific solution, they're gonna be very biased toward that. You know, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So it's important that they come in from a tech agnostic client first approach. And actually just looking at the landscape of what you need, what the optimal route is to introduce the most efficiencies at the lowest cost to your firm. Setting foundational capabilities that you can build on in the future to get more integrated and less sprawl. From a neutral place, say, Hey, here's what makes the most sense for your firm. Here is a set of trade-offs optimized for your firm at this moment in time, and we expect in the future for that set of trade-offs to shift to this. And here's a, a stepwise path from here to there. In a couple years, we recommend that it's shifts over here. Um, and here's the rationale behind that.
Adam Wardel:
You touched upon something there that is really good, which is we need to also emphasize this is not a, a one and done. We are going to keep growing and progressing, and that also means the solution you just implemented. We'll also keep developing and progress. and I think that as more people begin to overcome their concerns and utilize these tools for what they can offer, we'll probably find ways that nobody thought about before, uh, of utilizing it to make the work even better.
Jacob Andra:
Here's a key point I emphasize all the time. If the solution is easy. It's going to be commoditized and it's gonna be table stakes. It's actually not gonna give you a competitive advantage'cause everyone will rapidly adopt the easy button fixes. Everyone will have the same problems with tech sprawl and all of that. The real gains that get you above the, you know, level playing field of the easily adopted solutions are doing this deep, uh, research and architecting a set of trade-offs that will be a moving target for you. Um. You know, the optimal set of trade-offs today that lead to the optimal set of trade-offs tomorrow, and so on and so forth. That will be the competitive advantage of the future.
Adam Wardel:
Uh, yeah, I couldn't agree more. Um, being able to have that vision of what the real competitive advantage of the future is, uh, and how to implement that what's really going to set you apart as the, as the founder, the business leader, whether that business is. As a law firm, or whether that business is pouring cement or, you know, a, a, a, a software tool, uh, that you know, that that helps, um, private aviation instruction companies. You know, I, uh, that, that it, it, what matters is that you adopt that philosophy and you get ahead of it.
Jacob Andra:
This is something every business is going to have to grapple with or not as they see fit, and then deal with the consequences of not choosing to grapple with it. You're so right there. Speaking of law firms though, one thing I constantly hear, um, is that we have AI already figured out, and what they usually mean by that when we dig a little bit further is. They've subscribed to some sort of an AI tool that does some small part of their workflow and they've probably put some kind of a governance policy in place. And then back to what you said, it's not a one and done. Oh, check. We've got AI already handled. Um, well, sorry. But affirm that takes a much more proactive and deep dive approach than you is going to have much more of a competitive advantage than, than you. Back to my idea of table stakes.
Adam Wardel:
Yeah, and I think that, uh, I, I wanna, I wanna take what you said there and actually add a little something to it, because the governance is a, is a really key step in this process. Because it, it allows you to understand how your company, whatever that company is, will ethically intellectually, uh, and operationally utilize artificial intelligence. Amazing. There, there are laws, you know, the European Union has, has a very big one, but there are, there are in the, in the United States and there are other laws around the world that. Can guide you, but at the end of the day, you need to put that governance in place. And when you do that governance can, can be flexible enough to govern you as you many different, uh, uh, artificial intelligence tasks or, you know, work product or whatever you wanna think of there. But the idea is that. Yes. Now that you have governance in place, that is good. And that is a big part of checking the box that you have artificial intelligence created or, or implemented. But it, it's just the beginning. It's the beginning of the potential opportunity and just saying, okay, we have this, and now we have a, a large language model that's, you know, re reviewing. Uh, uh. This, you know, like I was saying before, reviewing the court documents for us or from discovery that, I mean, that's great and I'm, I'm, I'm glad you have that one thing done, but I, you know, I would challenge people to think a little bigger and to think a little broader about, uh, how, how now that you have the foundation set, how you can really expand that and get a competitive advantage.
Jacob Andra:
Absolutely. There's another mental model I'd like to throw your way, and I suspect based on previous conversations, you and I will really align on this, but it's fine if we don't as well. I just wanna throw it out there and we, we talk about it, but it's this idea that, uh, you actually alluded to it earlier that you know, AI is this revolution that's not just. Software, and so there's a paradigm where people think in terms of tools and platforms and individual capabilities, and so that's a very kind of siloed approach, right? It leads to a lot of fragmentation and inefficiency because even as you solve one specific problem and create localized efficiency, just by introducing now a new dashboard and a new tool and a new siloed workflow, you have already introduced inefficiency into a system, and if you keep going down that road, you'll end up actually more fragmented than you are today. You might, you might come out roughly the same. I mean, it just depends on how much localized efficiency a tool introduces, even as it introduces inefficiency. But what if you could actually get the efficiency without introducing the inefficiency? Um, what if AI could do a lot of the work in the background, um, without having to be in a SaaS model? That is the kind of old way, I think is, is not the paradigm of the future. Uh, what are your thoughts on this?
Adam Wardel:
I, I suppose that kind of gets to a foundation of how I am trying to preach artificial intelligence. Maybe this is a little bit of a, of a soapbox moment, and I, and I should be careful here, but the idea is that. Uh, when I stated we need to stop thinking about artificial intelligence or, or, or tools, uh, that as just glorified software. The reason I say that is because want people to realize that I am suggesting that the artificial intelligence is in fact and should be thought of. As having an actual presence, an actual intelligence that is running in the background all the time. It, it is, it is someone doing the work and it is someone there who's doing that work all the time. So, as an example of that. I look at, contract negotiation and, and, and really the, the, the kind of, you know, editing and review kind of part of contract negotiation, there's a lot more to it than that, but that's a good example of it. And how, what, what, what I foresee is the real future here that someday I want to wake up the morning and I don't just want to have an email. From someone saying, Hey Adam, I have X and Y contract. Can you take a look at it? What I want is that I want to have woken up that the artificial intelligence will have already looked at the contract for me, will have already done a review just like an associate attorney would have done for me. That review would already be done and in my email a brief. A, you know, or a summary an edited version. It's something that all I have to do is put on my deep thinking hat, my vision hat, and to say, okay, let's just take a look. me make sure, right. Let me do the, the right thing and put my stamp of approval on it. Let me think a little deeper about a couple of issues, but that's it. It's ready to go and it's done. Uh, and I can even right there just say, yeah, go ahead. This, this looks great. Or I made a few changes. Now it's ready to go. And that intelligence will respond to the email, right? It will help me set up follow up appointments for that, that it really will act. As somebody who is, uh, who is working, working for me around the clock, so that I need to do the complex thought, but a lot of that work is done.
Jacob Andra:
That's brilliantly stated, and it's stated in different terms than I've said it in the past, but I think what you're really talking about is the decoupling of functionality from interface. And so if you were to architect, okay, throw away all the old, you know, paradigm of SAS software and this product and that product, this login, that login, right? This interface, that interface, and just think if you were an alien. From another planet coming down and you were very intelligent and you understood, you know, you could easily understand the model of a law firm and how it's supposed to run, and then you could design it to be super efficient from the ground up. Well, first of all, you would have all the workflows, um, decoupled from the interfaces. So the workflows would be whatever the workflows were, and then you would intelligently build in a few interface touchpoints. At the exact places they need to be, they would be minimal. Maybe you would have one dashboard where you could toggle between different workflows in, in a single dashboard. Um, everything's just very integrated, but mostly as you're saying, the functionality that you need from these tools is running in the background only surfacing touchpoints alerts or interactions when you need them. There's no login to many different dashboards, many different tools. It's all just happening the way you need it to happen. Um, so I think that that is a, that is the paradigm of the future. We're just so stuck in an old SaaS model of software products
Adam Wardel:
yeah.
Jacob Andra:
we, we haven't made the shift.
Adam Wardel:
And I, and I am empathetic. I'm, you know, I, I know that change can be slow and it can be difficult. I, I remember there's a, there's a, a quote, and I, I, I know it's gonna sound terrible, but at, at the moment, I can't remember who said it, but when, when the, the train was invented, and that seems so long ago now, that, that people were afraid that moving at that speed. going to be detrimental to the health cause, heart attacks or, or problems, you know? And, and, and it was, it was, you know, it was the wrong thing to do to move a human at that speed. Uh, and, and of course, you know, we, you know, we look at that now and think that's just ridiculous. But it is that, that. change that needs to happen. And you're right, we need to stop looking at life and how we conduct business and how we do our workflows, uh, through that SaaS lens. And we need to, uh, start embracing just a, a new way of doing a, a new way of thinking about it.
Jacob Andra:
Absolutely. And we've been preaching what we call invisible ai, which just means functionality needs to be what it needs to be decoupled from the interface. Um, you have the interfaces you need, as we were saying. And then organizational intelligence is the other key concept that thinking in terms of your organization being intelligent, your workflow is being augmented with intelligence. Not from a siloed, um, isolated perspective of individual, little tiny workflow or tiny functionality, but the way that work moves across different sets of processes.
Adam Wardel:
Yeah, and I, I think this is a really good way to kind of tie it all back into, once you embrace. That governance framework in, in your business. And like I said, you, whatever business that may be, but once you get that established, then you, you really can feel confident and that, that you can take that framework and install it into. The, the intelligence that you're creating there, and you can utilize that intelligence to solve a lot of these, these problems. A lot of these things we've been talking about there, so,
Jacob Andra:
Absolutely, you have to have a robust governance, compliance framework. And then, you know, this, all of this that we're talking about is about, you know, master level orchestration versus, you know, kind of myopic, siloed focus.
Adam Wardel:
Yeah. And that we've, we've got to kind of get past that. I imagine the things that we will be able to accomplish. as a human race, when we can ourselves from that way of thinking and, and remove ourselves from that siloed way of thinking about things and just really open up and let it, and let it run, uh, you know, we, we will see wonders come out of this. So.
Jacob Andra:
I so agree with that, and it's been very refreshing to talk to somebody. Who really sees where this is all going. So thank you so much for coming on today, Adam.
Adam Wardel:
Absolutely. I, I've enjoyed every minute, but thank you for having me.
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