IGHS37 - Training Future Leaders: The Role of AI in Law Firms with Liz Salsedo

Jim Merrifield (00:00.481)
Hello and welcome to the InfoGov Hot Seat. I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is Liz Salsedo at Robinson & Cole Welcome, Liz.

Liz Salsedo (00:08.308)
Hey Jim, good to be here.

Jim Merrifield (00:10.337)
Yeah, it's awesome to have you in the hot seat, right? A colleague of mine in the hot seat gets asked some pressing questions. So let's let everybody get to know you a little better. Let's tell a brief introduction of yourself, your current role, and one fun fact about yourself.

Liz Salsedo (00:25.908)
Okay, so Liz Salsedo I'm the Director of Knowledge Management and Information Resources at Robinson and Cole. Your listeners probably know we're an AmLaw 200 firm, and I help with a lot of the tools surrounding legal research, legal drafting. I'm a fan of innovation, so everything AI. And prior to joining Robinson, I spent 15 years at Thomson Reuters consulting with law firms on legal tech.

And before that, I practiced law. So I am a recovering attorney. I don't know if that's my fun fact. That doesn't sound very fun. So I'll give you something else to work with. I also speak Italian fluently. So that's kind of fun and not many people know it.

Jim Merrifield (01:08.881)
nice, I might have to transcribe this interview into Italian.

Liz Salsedo (01:13.044)
There you go.

Jim Merrifield (01:18.017)
I love it. I love it. Great. Yeah, it's great to have you. And so here, let's kick this question off, this hot seat off. So how do, I know we work a lot together, right, our two teams. So how do knowledge management and information governance intersect to create a robust framework leveraging AI at organizations?

Liz Salsedo (01:37.14)
Awesome. I love that question because it really boils down to people and teamwork. So obviously, you know, I am on the knowledge management side and you're on the information governance side. And so I think in order to leverage AI effectively, you really need people. So you need people like myself and you working together. I think it's great because I can push for innovation as you can, but also we can make sure to do it safely.

So that's where you're gonna come in on the security side of things. And that's really it. I mean, working together, teamwork, bring in both of our experiences to bear and doing it in a safely secure manner for the firm.

Jim Merrifield (02:20.321)
Yeah, it takes a village, right? We can't do it alone and I don't have to be the bearer of bad news and say, hey, you can't use AI. You can't do this. You can't do that. But although in the firm, Liz is the fun one, right? She gets to bring the shiny tools and play and say, hey, look what we could do and all that good stuff. But no, it's... Yeah. You do, you do. You're much more fun than I am too. So here's another question. So in what ways can...

Liz Salsedo (02:32.148)
I'm sorry.

I do get to show some of the fun tools, so I agree with that.

Jim Merrifield (02:48.577)
Effective information governance enhanced knowledge management practices as it relates to AI. What do you think?

Liz Salsedo (02:55.06)
Yeah, definitely. So there's a lot of different ways I think that we can enhance it working together. So obviously we've talked about security. I feel like that's always the tension. So the tension between sort of the idea of innovation. So moving forward, adopting AI technology, right? Getting it in the hands of our users, which means our attorneys, our staff, making people more efficient and effective, which is the goal of using AI.

sort of balanced with the security part of it, which is a big part of what you do. And so I think that's how, again, coming back to the teamwork, we can work together and it can enhance each other. I know you wanted an example too. Is that right, Jim? Okay. So an example would be the power of the teams coming together really is a project that you and I did internally at the firm. We worked with a practice group.

Jim Merrifield (03:39.553)
Sure, yeah, I love examples, I love it.

Liz Salsedo (03:52.948)
with the goal of making sure to process and prove the workflows of that practice group. And in uncovering, we were able to uncover the need to also digitize that group and move them forward. And we're able to help leverage some technology that they were using in order to become more paperless. So that's an example of someone from the knowledge management side and then you from the information governance side coming together to really help move.

practice area forward and to gain efficiency and really help them to save time. So in that instance, we were able to shave off about 15 minutes per day per timekeeper, which added up to over half a million dollars just by doing that for that one practice group. So there's also a lot of not just time savings, but money that can be saved, right? In these processes. That's right. Or make more money is what it translates into really, right?

Jim Merrifield (04:43.489)
Yeah, and her doesn't like to save some money.

Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. That was a fun project. I'm sure we'll have plenty more on the docket this year into next. But along with a lot of benefits and things, there's a lot of challenges with AI and with the KM systems out there. How can, in your opinion, how can strong information governance practices help mitigate these challenges around AI and all the fun stuff?

Liz Salsedo (05:17.492)
Yeah, so obviously security, so strong practices around information governance protects data. So that's at the forefront of all of this. Let's go back to that balance. You can almost see them on the scales of justice. We'll use that for all our legal attorneys listening and other people at law firms. So we're balancing innovation and security. And we want to make sure security is always balanced with innovation.

And so obviously from your side protecting our data. And that means using tools that allow us to innovate, move forward, use AI in a safe, secure manner. So I see that as a huge benefit of working with an individual like you with strong information governance practices. I think it helps us protect our data. I think it also can help us when we're evaluating tools that we want to adopt at the firm, for example, being able to look at

the agreements that we had with vendors, for example, and make sure, number one, that they're not using the AI tool to train their data, right? Number two, that there's good language in those policies and documents, and there's more we can add to that, I'm sure. Go ahead, you can throw out a three, right, or a four on that list of things we want to balance. But I think that's really how information governance can help sort of bolster KM, because KM...

Knowledge management is where a lot of that data resides. The systems that you're using for knowledge management is where all that attorney work product lives. And we want to protect it and make sure it's safe. We'll still be able to leverage it and find it easier. I mean, that's really one of the biggest things we've seen, Jim, is finding stuff is one of the biggest challenges in these knowledge management systems. So can we use an AI tool safely to help us find stuff better and faster?

so our attorneys can repurpose, reuse the work product better, faster, more efficiently.

Jim Merrifield (07:17.793)
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. How do we use the power of our document management systems and our institutional knowledge to just create a better work product and train future leaders at the firm? I know you mentioned a few points there. We can mention three more, but we can't give everybody our secrets. At least on one podcast, we can't give everybody all the secrets. So I know we talked about a few things, but Liz,

Liz Salsedo (07:36.788)
That's right.

Liz Salsedo (07:42.292)
That's it.

Jim Merrifield (07:46.817)
Anything else you'd like to share as a final thought with the audience? Is there any speaking engagements that you have coming up? Anything, any events that you're attending that you wanted to make mention of or a summer vacation? I don't know, whatever you want.

Liz Salsedo (07:59.028)
Yeah, totally. So you just said train future leaders. And I think this is a big pain point for a lot of management on law firms is how do you retain good talent and then train talent future leaders of law firms for the future? And the future is going to include AI. So I think all of us need to be thinking about how are we training our people at our firms, at our organizations to understand AI and how to use it, leverage it effectively.

And so in terms of upcoming fun things for the summer, I'm gonna be speaking on two panels at AALL, Association for American Law Librarians in Chicago in July. One is on how to use AI and choose AI tools. And then the other one is on bias in AI. So that should be a lot of fun. And then Jim, you and I have an upcoming CLE that's gonna be coming out as well.

Jim Merrifield (08:50.721)
We do, we do. Tell everybody about that.

Liz Salsedo (08:53.172)
Yeah, sure. So it's a journey in really how to pick AI tools for your law firm and also stay secure and safe, right? Security and safety. And it's going to be through Wesley Glad Center. As soon as it's out, I'm sure Jim and I will be posting it on our LinkedIn profiles. So you'll have no problem catching that and listening to it. Anything to add, Jim?

Jim Merrifield (09:17.537)
No, it was just a fun, it was a great opportunity to be able to do that CLE with you. And I can't wait to hear the feedback from all the listeners and also to get some feedback from your conference, the law librarians in Chicago, right? I'm sure there'll be a lot of feedback there. And it's a great time for a conference, right? Because right before budget season, and you're gonna come back with all these ideas, I'm gonna go to ILTA in August and come back with a bunch of ideas and then we're gonna.

get together and put our budget together for 2025. So that's going to be a really exciting late summer.

Liz Salsedo (09:51.636)
That's true. It's like we'll have our holiday wish list. What do we want? Right? Awesome.

Jim Merrifield (09:56.833)
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. So listen, Liz, thanks so much for spending some time on the hot seat. I know you're very busy with all the AI tools out there and getting all these questions from people inside the firm. So thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy day to share some of your knowledge with the audience.

Liz Salsedo (10:19.508)
You've got it. Thank you, Jim. And thank you for your partnership. It's been a lot.

Jim Merrifield (10:22.561)
Yeah, no. Yeah, absolutely. And hopefully we'll continue on into the years, the months and years ahead. And of course, too, if for our listeners, if you want to be a guest on the information governance hot seat, just all you got to do is submit your information through our website, information or infogovhotseat.com I should get my own website, right? And thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.

Liz Salsedo (10:46.644)
Thank you.