David Friedlander: The Dealmaker

One thing that a lot of people are talking about and, um, is interesting, as I said, you- you've split with your Asian partners and, and Mallesons is, is back as an Australian firm for the moment.

Is the advent of AI, it's affecting all of us, us white collar operators, and, uh, you know, we know with Anthropic they've got a legal product out in the US.

I don't know how broad that is.

It's not in my area, but it t- it took the market, you know, the share market with quite a storm, and a lot of stocks were sold off.

Can you give us a bit of an idea? And I, I know, I know it's going right into the thick of what's happening today, but an idea of what AI is doing to the legal system, and what does it mean for lawyers?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you've hit on two things there.

The first is we just have no idea.

We're, like, we...

You know, things are changing so fast that we, we just need to be nimble.

We're not seeing work dry up, we're not seeing, you know, associate time dry up.

But we might, and we, w- you know, we're just working through every permutation to work out how we do, you know, how we, we face into it.

Our firm has just gone, we're, we're, we've gotta be fully in, because it's the only way to get the best thing we can for our clients and see where it takes us.

But honestly, two years from now, I suspect we'll know a lot more than we know today.

And what's the definition of fully in? How, how do you go about it?

Fully in means we've, we've gone long on one of the big, you know, service providers in that area, and partnering with them, and 90, like, 98% of our lawyers are using it.

Mm.

98%.

Wow.

And, and, you know, we think-

And has it improved productivity?

Uh, a- again, too early to call.

There's certainly some jobs where we can point to it, but across the firm, it hasn't yet had enough of an impact to tell you.

I reckon even six months from now we'll know the answer to that better.

Um, as you know, as you said, I, you know, I'm stepping down as chair.