How does pragmatism work into your analysis for a client?

Yeah, look, it's always important, but it's particularly important in these very high-risk situations.

jurisdictions to just understand, like on the point Olivier was making about counterparties and business partners, there's a lot you need to at some point get comfortable with a level of ambiguity that you might not have doing the same deal in Norway.

I think that's got to be part of the process, but it doesn't mean you ignore the risk, right? It means you, to the point you just made, Tom, is you build controls, you build monitoring, you build auditing around that.

And you just have to, I think in jurisdictions like DRC, just laying over your basic compliance, due diligence framework and your basic structure is risky in and of itself because it doesn't take into account the very specific, unique, local dynamics that you're going to encounter in a market like this.

So I think you have to be, you have to be pragmatic.

You have to be practical.

And how would you counsel a CCO who is a client or comes to you to actually start thinking about, yes, this is high risk, but yes, if the company will meet these steps after you've done an appropriate analysis, how can a CCO begin to change that thinking?

What changed, and why are you telling people perhaps you can consider this?

Yeah.

Let me start with, and Olivier can focus a lot more on the on-the-ground environment and provide better insights than I can on that, but I think it's a really interesting dynamic.

The DRC ha- is resource rich, right? And part of what has changed is- The value of the scarce resources that DRC offers has never been more important.

It's getting attention.

The other thing that I think that has changed perhaps is the political environment a little bit.

I think we are in a, an environment right now where the US government recognizes the importance of the DRC, recognizes some of the cha- certainly the challenges of doing business there.

I'm not quite sure who, who came up with that phrase, but I wanted to explore that a little bit because I've not seen it phrased in quite that way.

So what does that mean, as you're talking about from a cognition standpoint, where lawyers are expected to flip the switch that quickly?

Yeah, I, it, I think it's super ...

Well, look, let me start by, I think re- recognizing sort of what you just, the point you just made, which is, I mean, this has been kind of a runaway train, right? Like, we, we can't, we can't blame any, you know, leaders on, on not getting this perfect right away.

[laughs] 'Cause you're right, we went from, you know, kind of 0 to 60 almost overnight in terms of AI use in law firms.

And, you know, l- law firms, as you know, right, respond mostly to negative stimuli, right? So this all start, I mean, the, the governance instinct on AI started by, you know, really focusing on the risk, right? Like, like hallucin- you know, all the reports that we've all heard about hallucinations and, and lawyers citing cases that don't exist to in court filings and getting sanctioned and all of that, right? So, so that, that initial ...

And then of course client confidentiality and the concerns about the, the model, the use of the models leaking confidential client information out into the public in some way.

Those were the first stimuli that hit law firm leadership, and so the natural reaction was restriction, right? Slow down, hold off, don't embarrass us.

[laughs]