IGHS38 - The Future of AI in the Legal Tech Space

Jim Merrifield (00:00.619)
Well hello and welcome to the InfoGov Hot Seat I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is Tony Forde at FIT. Welcome Tony.

Great, I'm glad that you were able to take some time out of your busy schedule. I know you're preparing for ILTACON in the next month and I've seen a lot of stuff going around the company and FIT so again, I'm very excited to sit down get to know you and the company a little better. So let's kick this off. Can you tell the audience a brief introduction of yourself, your current role and one fun fact about

Anthony Forde (00:39.77)
Tony Ford I'm the founder and president CEO of FIT which is actually spelled out the future in tech You know founded out of we've been around about 18 years, but we were founded out of the VDS world was the managed services company So this is our tech company that we spun out of VDS a few years ago Fun fact that people wouldn't actually know I'm a sneaker head I am

You know, I probably keep around 100 pairs of in my circulation, which is terrible to admit as a grown man.

Jim Merrifield (01:18.401)
I love it. We're gonna get along really well because you wear sneakers for conferences. Do you wear them for your presentation?

Anthony Forde (01:22.61)
you

Anthony Forde (01:26.602)
I absolutely do. I'm a Duncan Aramax guy. have Aramax on right now with my suit. just, you know, it's one of things.

Jim Merrifield (01:34.089)
I love it. Alright, that's awesome. You're the Air Max guy, I'm the Converse guy. So that's awesome.

Anthony Forde (01:42.404)
like it. That's cool.

Jim Merrifield (01:44.577)
Sweet, sweet. So let's talk about the company a little bit. Future in tech. So when you think about the competition out there, right, there's a lot of competition between products and things. What's the key differentiator in your mind of your product versus the competition?

Anthony Forde (02:02.298)
think our approach is a little different. We sell in modules, so you don't have to buy the entire governance suite. So we give firms opportunities. We will help you with just the closing workflow. We'll give you just retention and disposition. You can separate paper from electronic. mean, there are just a lot of different needs out there within the legal community. We're focused primarily on legal, but we do all kinds of different workflow tools.

I would actually say we're more of a workflow company than just a governance software company. So everything we do, we aim to be configurable because you have to put it in the firm's hands. How you separate a process, how you authorize a process, and how you execute a process is really where we start.

Jim Merrifield (02:47.295)
Nice, love it. So you mentioned, you your product's a little different, right? You can kind of just purchase what you want to use. And you mentioned some product features. Are there any specific ones that you're focused on right now and why? Without giving, I know there's probably some releases at ILTACON I'm not asking you to divulge some information, but hey, if you want to give us a preview, go ahead.

Anthony Forde (03:10.084)
think, as there's no secret, our big loss is going to be mobility. We took a very different approach to mobility than I think has been done before. It's an actual separate product. So you can overlay it. You can combine it with a governance suite. But what we try to do is create a quarantine approach where firm credentials, you just have your own locker that's cloud -based. And you can push and pull right now. It's configurable about what you want to do. So we're looking

you can push and pull 20 terabytes in an instant in a very secure way and clean it, house it, inherit hierarchies from whatever your DMS is, your RMS, it doesn't have to be ours. So we're doing some interesting things around that. We have an office release, an upcoming, it's our, our office product was built really for the traditional FM world, you know, helping. So it's a mobile app for,

For those who still track files on the floor and have to scan barcodes, you just use your iPhones. We have some of those tools that'll be released as well in the next month that are updates. But primarily, it's just a new build. I think it's a very, it's a fun build. We try to make, you know, we're all former governance managers. I'm more the eDiscovery side, but the rest of the team all were records managers and firms around the country. So you try to get everything, the experience to be three clicks or less. That's

you should be able to, anyone should be able to use it. An attorney shouldn't need to be trained and there's no record clerk that should have to not be able to figure out this system within five minutes. It really has to be a simple approach. So it's not a simple system, but we made it look less complex.

Jim Merrifield (04:53.045)
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more and three clicks for an attorney is a nice sales pitch there because the less clicks, you know, once you get to the four or five, you know, six, seven, eight clicks, forget it. Yeah. No, no. That's right. You do three clicks. They might wear some sneakers around the office, you know.

Anthony Forde (05:05.39)
You lost them. They're never coming back to the boat. But they're on the island

Anthony Forde (05:13.956)
Yeah.

Jim Merrifield (05:17.121)
For sure. So you mentioned Iltta. I know you'll be at ILTACON next month. Is there anything in particular you're looking forward to at ILTA

Anthony Forde (05:27.782)
This will be our first ILTA, so we, although we're an old business, we were able to secure one of the scholarship opportunities for startups because Future in Tech is a startup for us. And that's pretty exciting. I've attended ILTA a lot. I think I've even spoken to a few ILTAs, but always as a guest, never as a host. So it'll be fun to have a booth in the exhibit hall and have a demos suite where we'll be showing all kinds of different things and catching up with the peer group. mean, obviously.

been doing this for more than a week so have a lot of friends and I'll be happy to catch up with a lot of companies we do business with. We are releasing a few connectors with companies like DocSolid and others that are doing some different things to help some of the bigger firms around the world so this should be an exciting time.

Jim Merrifield (06:16.671)
Yeah, no, that's great. Looking forward to meeting you in person. I'm sure we've probably crossed paths at some point, but it'd be nice

Anthony Forde (06:18.394)
Thank you.

Anthony Forde (06:23.608)
We have, we probably just don't remember when and why.

Jim Merrifield (06:27.275)
Probably, probably not, but we'll definitely see each other in Nashville, looking forward to that and connecting and having some nice conversations there. Now know we talked about a bunch of different topics, but Tony, is there anything else you wanted to share as a final thought with the audience before we let you

Anthony Forde (06:46.234)
I mean, I think there's a couple things. I know everyone is concerned, or with the least of feedback I'm getting, as we talk to clients about Documents of the Wild and how we're dealing with network shares and how we're dealing with OneDrive. And I think it's a major focus and something that we focus on, so our product does all that and really is focused on the future of the Office 365 suite

host a PowerPoint and what will probably be co -pilot and a other things. AI is a real issue for all of us. So trying to figure out how to do all that and do it securely is the next frontier. So, you know, the certifications we're all talked to and ISO and, you know, we're looking at a federal piece that we're FedRAMP as well, but how are you going to deal with AI and all of those different things is really the future of this

and trying to do it securely. That's really the fun part. So we're looking forward to actually learning some more. There's a lot of AI workshops at Ilta this year. So joining some of that. I know you're working on a paper on some things for AI and lawyers. So reading some of that and some of the other peer group stuff, the LFIGS stuff, we're all paying very close attention to it. So that's really, if I could give any advice to anyone entering the space or learning more about the space, the peer group.

studies are where it's at. That's where we all figure out what the biggest firms in the world are doing and spend the money on the research.

Jim Merrifield (08:18.603)
Yeah, and that's the power, right? Of the peer -to -peer networking at conferences such as ILTA, ARMA, others, right? We're all here to learn from one another and I think we're all figuring out this AI thing, right? Even lawyers, right? Lawyers are looking for training on how to use AI. I think everybody's using it, right? But I think the tough part is how do we use it safely? For sure. So now let me ask, you're in the West Coast, right? You're in LA.

Anthony Forde (08:47.982)
Yep, once again.

Jim Merrifield (08:49.161)
Okay, so are you a Dodger

Your Dodger fans so congratulations last night. Home Run Derby right Hernandez.

Anthony Forde (08:56.184)
Yeah, that was pretty fun to

Jim Merrifield (09:00.229)
that was awesome. That was probably one of the best Home Run Derbies. Come on. That, in a long

Anthony Forde (09:04.64)
It has to be. Well, there was one with Soto a few years ago that went back and forth. That was pretty exciting as well. But yeah, we were all sitting on the edge of the seat.

Jim Merrifield (09:12.213)
Yeah. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And listen, I'm pumped up because

Anthony Forde (09:19.194)
look at him.

Jim Merrifield (09:20.031)
Yeah, we got we got Soto though on our team so you know, but you got Hernandez So maybe we'll meet each other in the World Series this year. I don't know if we're able to Yeah, I don't know you guys got to get past that Yeah, you guys got to get past Philly and we got to get out of our own way

Anthony Forde (09:27.994)
Either or, please. We'll see how the 50 holds up.

Anthony Forde (09:36.206)
Yeah, Phillys always tough. And for some reason, the Padres always sneak up. And the owners of the Padres, we share a floor here in our office. So I have to hear them talk all the time.

Jim Merrifield (09:49.057)
Yeah, no for sure so that's always a fun time I just wanted to I Couldn't help but ask because I know you're on the west coast. So again, thanks for for joining us on the hot seat I think this is a great conversation You know, so thanks for taking the time out of your day if you'd like to for our audience if anybody would like to be a guest on the hot seat It's a really simple process. Just go to our website infogovhotseat.com fill out the information and we'll get you on

the docket on the schedule like Tony here. And thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day. Yeah, absolutely.

Anthony Forde (10:22.84)
Same to you, my pleasure You too. Thanks.