Summary:
In this eye-opening episode, Mallory Mejias sits down with Ernie Svenson—better known as Ernie the Attorney—to talk tech, tradition, and the tectonic shifts in how professionals learn and connect. A former litigator turned AI advocate, Ernie shares why he believes many associations are at a crossroads: adapt to how members actually work today or risk becoming irrelevant. From the viral LinkedIn post that questioned the value of bar associations, to the behind-the-scenes of building a thriving online community for lawyers, this conversation is packed with practical takeaways for association leaders.
Ernie Svenson is a former New Orleans litigator who now helps solo and small-firm lawyers simplify their practices through automation, outsourcing, and practical tech. Known as “Ernie the Attorney,” he founded the Inner Circle, a membership community for lawyers seeking a simpler, more enjoyable practice. He’s authored several ABA books, is a frequent speaker, and has been recognized as an ABA Legal Rebel and Fastcase 50 honoree.
https://ernietheattorney.net/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernieattorney/
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction to Ernie Svenson
02:21 - From Big Law to AI Educator: Ernie's Journey
05:24 - The Power of Paperless and the AI Déjà Vu
08:07 - Bar Associations and the Relevance Question
15:43 - What Makes Online Communities Thrive
22:20 - Breaking Through Institutional Resistance
26:00 – Practical Use Cases for AI in Law
29:35 – AI Hallucinations vs. Human Error
40:32 – What’s Next: Agentic AI and the Legal Industry
44:32 – Why Associations Should Back the Right Tools
48:59 – Final Thoughts & Where to Find Ernie
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🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
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Granola AI ➔ https://www.granola.so
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ViewIQ ➔ https://viewiq.ai
ChatGPT ➔ https://chat.openai.com
Claude ➔ https://claude.ai
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Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress 🔗 https://BlueCypress.io, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.
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Mallory Mejias is passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space.
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Read the Transcript
🤖 Please note this transcript was generated using (you guessed it) AI, so please excuse any errors 🤖
- [00:00:00:14 - 00:00:09:17]
Mallory
Welcome to the Sidecar Sync Podcast, your home for all things innovation, artificial intelligence and associations.
[00:00:09:17 - 00:00:50:14]
Mallory
My name is Mallory Mejias and I'm one of your hosts along with Amith Nagarajan and if you lead an association, this episode might make you a little bit uncomfortable, but in the best way. Ernie Svenson, better known online as Ernie the Attorney, is a former New Orleans litigator who now helps solo and small firm lawyers streamline their practices with automation, outsourcing, and practical AI. He's also the founder of Inner Circle, a member community for lawyers who want simpler, more modern practices.
[00:00:51:14 - 00:02:04:12]
Mallory
We start with the LinkedIn posts that lit up a nerve. Ernie's argument that many lawyers get more day-to-day value from AI tools and peer communities than from traditional bar resources. And then we zoom out to the bigger question every association leader has to face. How do you stay essential when members can get answers anywhere? In our conversation, Ernie shares why he believes many professional organizations are at a crossroads, adapt to how members actually learn and solve problems every day or watch value migrate elsewhere. In this episode, we cover Ernie's path from big law to solo practice to tech and AI educator and why serendipity is the theme, the paperless moment that convinced him tech creates real advantage and why AI is that moment again. His hot take on bar associations and relevance and what that means for any membership organization. Why online communities are winning on speed and practicality and how associations can respond. The big opportunity most organizations are sitting on, a deep knowledge repository and the missing layer to make it useful now, hello AI.
[00:02:05:13 - 00:02:20:02]
Mallory
And then finally, what it looks like to build community for the people who want to innovate and stop spending energy on the naysayers. This is a fun episode. We've got lined up for you all. Please enjoy my conversation with Ernie, the attorney.
[00:02:20:02 - 00:02:39:22]
Mallory
Ernie, thank you so much for joining us on the Sidecar Sync podcast. We're happy to have you here. First and foremost, with all our interviews, I'm hoping you can share a little bit with our audience about your background, big law to solo to AI educator. What's the thread through your professional career?
[00:02:41:05 - 00:02:42:19]
Ernie
Derendipity, that is the thread.
[00:02:44:14 - 00:04:00:06]
Ernie
I, uh, I'm a lawyer. I don't, haven't practiced in a while. I came out of a big firm in 2006, right after Katrina. I had been messing around with technology. I was a big believer in being paperless and, you know, being forward thinking about using tech, tech in my practice. And that proved to be useful. And, you know, I just saw the efficiency. I saw the benefits. I saw the resistance, of course, of lawyers who were very provincial in their thinking. It's more cautious, I guess, but whatever. They didn't embrace technology as rapidly as other people did. Um, but over the years, they've come around because technology has surrounded them and, you know, made it so that they have to. And along the way, I pivoted out of practicing a lot full time to, uh, teaching lawyers about technology, about writing about it, speaking, got a podcast. I've had a website since 2002, a blog called Earning the Attorney. And that was really probably one of the most pivotal things that got me attention. And, you know, the net effect of all that is that today I run a community for solo and small firm lawyers who want to learn about technology. And it's wonderful because I only deal with lawyers who are forward thinking and not the naysayers and the nitpickers.
[00:04:01:13 - 00:04:14:16]
Ernie
And, you know, AI now is a big thing and we get to talk about it and it's enjoyable to talk to people who want to embrace technology, you know, and lawyers are my group, but anyone who likes to embrace technology, I'm willing to talk to.
[00:04:14:16 - 00:04:24:02]
Mallory
I love it. That was a nice short and sweet intro for you. I also, I've got to say, I love Earning the Attorney. When did that come to you? Was it just a thought or was it kind of always in your mind?
[00:04:25:03 - 00:04:57:01]
Ernie
Um, actually there was a, so when I clerked in the federal court right after law school for two years, there was a magistrate there named Michelle Wynn. She was a mentor to many young lawyers and she was just a wonderful person. And she used to call me Earning the Attorney and she had this playful way of being very serious when that was required, but also being playful. And she was the first person who kind of made me aware, you know, yes, this is a serious matter to be a lawyer and to do the lawyer thing, but you know, it doesn't mean you have to be a frowny face all the time. And so when I started this web blog in 2002, just to experiment,
[00:04:58:03 - 00:05:24:14]
Ernie
um, she had passed away by then and I just, her name popped in my head as like, well, I should call it something not, you know, Ernest's lawyer's web blog thing. So I called it Earning the Attorney, you know, as an homage to her. And I caught on. A lot of people found me and said, Oh, you know, you're a lawyer doing blog. And it was like the fifth lawyer with a blog back then. So, um, my remembrance of her turned out to be beneficial in the blogging sense, but yeah, that's where the name came from.
[00:05:24:14 - 00:05:59:17]
Mallory
I love it. I read a story on your website about you in a case where you were in a room full of big law attorneys and paralegals and they had boxes and boxes of papers and you were digital at this point and they were looking for this one document. You were able to pull it up instantly and they were searching and searching. It's a really good story about how you kind of had an eye for what was to come in terms of the digital world. I'm curious if you can share, well, if you want to talk about that story, I think that would be fun, but also what was that moment for you with artificial intelligence when you said, Hmm, this might be the next thing.
[00:06:00:19 - 00:08:06:02]
Ernie
Um, well, so that was, that was me being paperless and the, the aha moment was similar and that story I wrote about that because when I left the big firm, I wasn't sure if this was going to work for me to be solo and use technology. Theoretically it seemed like it would, and it was helping me in the big firm practice, but you're always looking over your shoulder and thinking, you know, am I somehow not, you know, normal and doing something that is going to lead me into trouble. And that was the moment where as a solo lawyer, I realized like, wow, I have a huge advantage over all these other lawyers that are doing things the old fashioned way and they didn't know it. And part of me wanted to tell them, I found this document that they were looking for that I didn't care about just to share it. I was like, you know, the, the desire to share it with somebody. And I thought, no, that's not my job. My job is to take the advantage and work with it. And this is similar thing with AI. Like I see lawyers not embracing it, but when you know how to use it, it's, it's magic. It's not magic that doesn't, it works all the time the way you want it to. Obviously you have to use your brain and the critical thinking is required, but most lawyers think that they're doing critical thinking and many are, but many are not. And I think most of the criticism of AI are people who encounter some single flaw or something that didn't work just like it was with paperless. It's, oh, you can't make everything paperless or, you know, you give it some example of something that didn't work. And you, instead of saying like somebody trying to make something, you know, that can benefit them work and say, okay, well, I could work around that or I can adapt lawyers too frequently. Oh, I found a flaw. That's it. I'm out of here. And I think there's going to be a huge divide, not just with lawyers, but people who embrace AI learn it, develop instincts, because there are instincts you have to develop, which only come through use. Those people are going to have an advantage over those who do not use it. That's already happened. And it was the same aha moment for me when I started using AI. I was like, wow, this is, this is a game changer.
[00:08:07:04 - 00:08:34:23]
Mallory
For sure. There was a post that you made on LinkedIn that caught Amit's eye first. He sent it over to me. I said, ooh, this could be really good to discuss. And it was about bar association. So for our listeners who aren't lawyers, I'm sure we have, you know, many bar association executives listening, but for everybody else who kind of knows maybe what the bar association does, can you first just set the stage for us? What value were they designed to provide?
[00:08:36:10 - 00:09:08:05]
Ernie
Well, you know, they had a, they were in a unique position back then to bring people to get there who were like-minded, who had similar situations and say, okay, let's talk about how we can all help each other. That is what associations do, bar associations and any other kind of association. And in the era before the internet, the only way to do that was through physical meetings and they would put out publications and all that good stuff. I think bar associations are populated by people who want to help people. They're great organizations.
[00:09:09:07 - 00:10:53:10]
Ernie
I think the problem comes, it's just a common situation where people are used to doing something in a certain way, especially inside of an organization. And it's very hard to pivot away from that usual way to a newer, better way. Cause you have to get many people on board at the same time. And any group, small group, or even as sometimes a single individual can thwart that effort by, you know, raising objections or throwing, throwing up tantrums or whatever. And in bar associations, I watched this happen. Like, you know, they would say, yeah, we want, we want to embrace technology. Okay. Well, yes, of course you do that theoretically. But then when they encounter the thing that would have to happen, they'd say, oh, we don't know about that. We don't want to do that. I'll say, oh, well, you know, Facebook groups appear. All kinds of other people filled the void that these bar associations were in a unique position and had an advantage. And they ceded that advantage to other people by not embracing online communities. And now by not embracing AI, they're probably going to do the same thing. But it's sad because they have a repository that they had the largest, longest running repository of useful information. And if they can just, you know, learn how to make that available to their members in a way that's convenient for the members, they win. But they're not winning. They're losing to private enterprise people like me. I run a community and I only have three years worth of information, but it's still more valuable because I'm making it available using AI chatbots and things like that. Whereas the Louisiana Bar Association is still lumbering along and you know, that you can't wrap their head around it. The leadership has all kinds of questions. So, you know, it's sad for them, but good for other people. Actually,
[00:10:54:22 - 00:11:13:01]
Mallory
for all of you listening who heard episode, I think it was 99 with Jackson Boyer, who's the CEO of Rally Board. We talked about this exact situation about influencers disrupting legacy associations because of their distribution, their influence, their reach. And now I feel like we're seeing that just a few episodes later.
[00:11:14:14 - 00:11:19:02]
Mallory
I'm curious for Bar Associations, is membership mandatory or voluntary? In Louisiana, it's mandatory. In
[00:11:19:02 - 00:11:40:07]
Ernie
other states, it's voluntary. And as a general rule, I would say, obviously there are exceptions, but as a general rule, the ones that are voluntary tend to be more responsive to the needs of their members because they don't have the guarantee that the members are going to be paying that subscription.
[00:11:42:11 - 00:11:51:22]
Mallory
That makes sense. And so they handle licensing compliance, and they handle licensing compliance. Continuing education, in-person events, networking. Does that sound right?
[00:11:51:22 - 00:11:53:10]
Ernie
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:11:55:02 - 00:12:17:11]
Mallory
In this striking post, you said that you thought most lawyers get more value from a $20 chat GPT subscription than $435 bar dues. That's not just cheaper, right? That's a 20x value gap. What do you think is driving that gap? Do you think it's technology itself like we were talking about? Do you think it's technology? What are you thinking about? Do you think it's something deeper about associations?
[00:12:19:09 - 00:13:16:09]
Ernie
Well, I think, yes, associations have a cautionary mindset, which makes sense in most cases, but like with everything, there are exceptions. And part of the problem is when they don't understand, when leadership doesn't understand what the real trade-offs are and how much of an advantage there is to be trained versus how little risk or problems there are. And as I said, I have this membership community that's, I've put out courses, we've done video programming, a whole bunch of presentations over three years. And about six months ago, the platform I used announced that you could use it in a chatbot, which I didn't sign up for immediately, but eventually I thought, yeah, I should probably do this. And I did. And basically, it turned this three years worth of content into something that any member can query and get a very intelligible answer, I would say 95% of the time.
[00:13:17:09 - 00:14:15:23]
Ernie
And they get it 24 hours a day and it costs me, I don't have to do anything. I don't have to wake up and answer a phone or do anything. It just gives the answer. Now, I can also see with this platform, which is called Circle, I can see in the AI inbox what questions people have asked. So I look at them and I say, oh, that's interesting. People are wondering about this. Oh, wait, the AI chatbot didn't give a good enough answer. Let me dive in and answer that question for them. So it's more than just that the AI gives the answers. It's also how you can dive in and see what people are wondering about. And that's just not replicable at scale when people are meeting in person, when resources are walled off, even if they are online, you have to search for them. And you just want to query, I want to know about this. What's the answer? And it gives you the answer and then gives you sources that you can link to. Okay, well, let me go find that source. Who doesn't want that if you're running an association, right?
[00:14:17:12 - 00:14:44:09]
Mallory
I'm in total agreement. And the fact is that there are solutions for exactly what Ernie is describing right now. There are knowledge assistants built for associations. And I really challenge you all listening, if you all don't have one or are not in the plans of rolling out one, what are you doing? Think about all the incredible, the best resources you have probably in your industry or profession that's just not accessible to the masses. It seems like a disservice to the member.
[00:14:44:09 - 00:15:03:18]
Ernie
Mm-hm, totally. And the thing is, the nice thing about a community, which I didn't appreciate this when I was starting the community. I was really just trying to corral all these resources and put them somewhere where people could log in. But over time, I realized that a community that's properly managed, you get people to know each other better in a way that otherwise wouldn't happen.
[00:15:04:18 - 00:15:41:14]
Ernie
You can have conversations behind that login wall that you can't have out there in the wild of the Internet where people are gonna go at, you know, bonkers if somebody says one thing. You can manage the conversation, you can curate things. It's just a better user experience. But unless you've experienced it and seen what it's like, and if you say, yeah, I've seen that on Facebook groups, like, no, no, we're not talking. Facebook groups are not it. Yes, that is an online group, but there's still too much chaotic activity there. It wasn't built in the way that other online communities are built.
[00:15:43:10 - 00:16:08:03]
Mallory
I wanted to dive into that next. So you mentioned Facebook groups, which are not ideal, but still a way that people congregate online. I think in that post you mentioned Reddit as well, which I'm a huge fan of, if I need to crowdsource information. Your community, you use Circle, we use Circle at Sidecar as well. But I can imagine many association leaders listening to this and saying, well, we do have an online community and we do have an online forum. Why do you think in that situation, like if an association were using Circle,
[00:16:09:09 - 00:16:16:04]
Mallory
what is your take on that? And why in associations online communities may not be as effective as in individuals?
[00:16:18:05 - 00:16:24:15]
Ernie
Well, I think one thing, so one is you should have a platform, Circle is a good platform, Facebook is less desirable.
[00:16:25:17 - 00:17:50:15]
Ernie
When you create the platform, and I see this because I participate in Circle's own community and hear what people there ask, and these are all content creators and they're trying to learn as I was. And one of the things that I didn't appreciate that needed to happen, which I now understand, is that somebody or some people need to be very active in making people connect to each other and in providing actual one-on-one, time-consuming, hands-on discussion with people. So I realize at some point, if I really want this community to thrive more and have more energy, I need to engage with people more, sometimes one-on-one. However it is, I need to engage. Now, the AI chatbot is good because now I don't have to answer low-level questions, and if I train them to use that, that can help me. But somebody has to be the face of that community or some people, and they have to bring energy to that. And the Circle community has those people, obviously, because they want people to have the best experience in their community, and they're doing it at a high level. But there's a lot more, it's not the same as physical communities. And you have to figure out how it's different and how it's different for your community. But it's gonna require at least one person or maybe more depending on the size of the community, who's just like there, that's their job. They're the community manager, they have energy, they have spark,
[00:17:52:16 - 00:18:13:12]
Ernie
are they able to get people talking to each other? That's a skill online, especially, because people are very reluctant to share information in a Zoom meeting, just because they're all there to learn the same thing. Even if they know each other, you have to break down the walls, and there's a trick to that, which I don't know how to explain it, but I've learned it, at least from my community. So there's some learning.
[00:18:13:12 - 00:18:35:10]
Mallory
Mm-hmm. What issues do you find the lawyers that you work with are most concerned about? And do you find that in your experience with bar associations, they are creating the kind of educational content and networks to help with those issues? Or are they kind of doing their own thing, and then you're able to be a bit more reactive to things as they come up?
[00:18:35:10 - 00:19:53:05]
Ernie
Well, I try to figure out what they want so that I don't have to react to something that seems like out of the blue to me. But I will say that for years, I've been asking them to answer questions, and I have an assessment that's 50 questions. And so I've been asking them roughly the same sets of questions for a long time, and have a lot of data around what they're most focused on. And I would say it breaks down into, let's say, five things for solo and small firm lawyers. But large firms have this, too. It's just they bureaucratize and create committees around this. But number one, obviously, they want operational efficiency and streamlining and not feeling like they're burdened, and that falls into the bucket of productivity things and efficiency and that kind of stuff. That's pretty general. Then you get into automation, which now is AI. How can we make a lot of things happen automatically, or how can we use AI? That's one category. Another one is outsourcing, which is really an advanced form of delegation. And all of these things also have an undercurrent of systems. You can't do things in a haphazard way. So whether it's operations or use of AI in automation or delegation, you have to have systems. And so that's not a separate category. It's just an undercurrent.
[00:19:54:05 - 00:20:29:20]
Ernie
And then third, I would say cybersecurity or security. Obviously, super important because that can bring the whole thing to a grinding halt quickly. And then last, marketing, especially online marketing. And then I would say for lawyers these days and for a lot of people, they want remote lawyering or virtual lawyering, and they want freedom. That's the tip of the pyramid. When everything else has been organized, many of them are like, "You know, I don't really want to make more money. I want to be able to enjoy my life more." And yes, automation and delegation and systems gives you that once you get it all set up.
[00:20:31:19 - 00:20:50:00]
Mallory
Do you feel like, without pointing the finger too much, do you feel like bar associations, as you see them, are excelling in providing educational content in any one of these areas, in all of them? I assume you saw some gaps, which is why you started what you're doing now. But where do you think they thrive?
[00:20:51:09 - 00:20:56:05]
Ernie
So I think the problem with not just bar associations, but because bar associations,
[00:20:57:09 - 00:22:20:24]
Ernie
especially in states where access is mandatory and then they provide CLE, CLE is how they make extra money. So the incentives then start to become drivers for what they do. And I noticed this, you know, when I was at the big firm, you know, I would get invited to go speak. And then when I was on my own, I was invited to speak and I enjoyed it. I liked speaking. And I started to observe that a lot of these talks, you know, many of the people who were giving them, they weren't so great. But they didn't have to be because all the company needed was warm bodies. And then they provided the hours. It was sort of like the DMV got your ticket punched and you're good. Right. So what I started running my own CLE program thinking, this is great. I'll just do it myself. And then I can invite top notch speakers and talk only about technology. And then I discovered that if I offered CLE credit, which I was able to do, that like 80% of the people were there just to get the credit. Yes, they appreciated this, the tech stuff somewhat, but they just had a mentality that made it hard for me to get the right people in the room and exclude those others. So I had to cut off my money making part of my operation, which I was willing to do, but I'm pretty sure no bar association to hold a meeting and say, you know, we're just going to stop making as much money. It's just not what they would do. Right.
[00:22:22:02 - 00:22:43:20]
Mallory
Oh, man, that's kind of a catch 22. I feel like we've spent a good portion of this conversation so far talking about how associations lean more antiquated and traditional, especially when it comes to technology. But I'm curious, Ernie, from your perspective, if you were to step in right now and decide to run Louisiana Bar Association,
[00:22:44:24 - 00:23:03:24]
Mallory
what I guess, what paths do you see for a solution here? Because when tradition is so steeped into the organization, I can imagine it would be quite difficult to just say we're going to break everything and build up a new from scratch. But kind of what would you say is a good starting point?
[00:23:03:24 - 00:23:11:05]
Ernie
So I don't think whether it's in a law firm, especially larger, the larger, the more this is true, or any organization,
[00:23:12:16 - 00:24:34:23]
Ernie
I've learned that you have to factor in the human factor. And one of my favorite quotes by Peter Drucker, the famous management consultant, was he said, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." Meaning the humans are going to determine what happens more than everything else. So you can have all the strategy, but the human nature component is going to make it not work or work. So what I think has to happen is you have to have sort of like a skunkworks project that's isolated and smaller. And you say, we're going to test this in a beta group. And we're going to decide who gets in there first and you need to give us feedback because you can't unleash this all to the entire group at once. It's just not feasible, but you can make it work at small scale and then learn from that. And then also what happens, and this is the human nature part, a lot of people will then get jealous and say, "Well, I want to be part of that group." Right? So now it becomes something people want to join. So I had a friend at a law firm and he would ask me his questions and I'd say, "Look, just don't make it available to everybody. If it's the paperless thing, make it available to three people in a practice area group." And when they get it down and when they're talking about how amazing it is to other people, they go, "Well, we want that." So you have to make it something that people earn in the beginning and then there will be a tipping point that's somewhere along the line.
[00:24:36:14 - 00:25:08:04]
Mallory
I love that. Our kind of core belief at Sidecar is education empowering association leaders. So we're always a big fan of educating your whole team as a baseline. But I love the idea of kind of the psychology of it. I know my husband works in healthcare and they have an AI medical scribe and that's kind of how they rolled it out now that I'm thinking about it. Certain people got access, they started talking about it, everyone else said, "When do I get my access?" And then you have this buy-in that you didn't get before. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:25:09:05 - 00:25:30:20]
Mallory
Now, I know... So you have an online community and you also teach courses and you have kind of like a mastermind group for lawyers, is that right? Yep. In your chat GPT workshop, can you give us examples of problems that you see lawyers solving with chat GPT, with Claude, with another LLM?
[00:25:31:24 - 00:25:44:20]
Ernie
Yeah. Sure, we had a meeting just about an hour ago so I can even think back to that meeting. Perfect. But the main thing overarching, I will say, is that I think to learn how to use AI wherever you are.
[00:25:46:02 - 00:26:14:08]
Ernie
You need to use it, right? It's a hands-on thing, right? And the more you use it, the more you learn, the more you get instincts for what's likely to work or not or when something's going awry, like, "Well, I can understand why that's going awry." So you're not shutting it down and going, "This doesn't work." So one, you have to be using it. But secondly, it's better if when you're using it in that way, you're talking to other people regularly who are like you. So I bring these lawyers together and twice a week we meet and we discuss.
[00:26:15:12 - 00:27:00:04]
Ernie
And in the beginning, I was kind of leading the charge and saying, "Okay, well, everybody's got to get chat GPT plus $20 a month." And I kind of gave them some guidelines and we talked, I laid some groundwork, which then I turned into a course using chat GPT. And now they go through the... Anyone who's not up to speed goes through the course or wants to catch up goes through the course. And once they're caught up, we just talk about things. But when they hear each other talking about the problems, a lot of times some misconceptions will get exposed or some ways to work around something that they weren't sure would work gets understood. But they know that this is not Ernie Svensson telling them the way the world's supposed to be, but a group of lawyers that are all in the same boat as them. That is the secret ingredient.
[00:27:02:05 - 00:27:03:16]
Mallory
That peer learning component.
[00:27:03:16 - 00:28:09:02]
Ernie
Yeah. Yep. It's a bunch of different things. They're like, they'll ask about, "Oh, I was having a problem with summaries. My summaries weren't coming out right. And I really need these notes to be perfect." And then the other lawyers are like, "Well, you don't really need it to be perfect. You can take your own notes in this tool called Granola, Granola AI. If you know about it, go check it out. And you can take your own notes there and it'll incorporate your notes that you're taking live and you have your own notes there as well. So they just need to know like, "Oh, okay. I didn't know there was a way to do that." Okay. Well, now I will plow forward and try it because on their own, when they encounter a problem, they'll tend to think, "Well, that's it. That's the problem." But when they hear other lawyers saying, "No, I encountered that problem, but I worked through it." And summarization is one of those things that AI does really well, but lawyers need it to be done really well perfectly for some types of notes. And yes, you can do that. You can't trust AI to do it all by itself. That's pretty much a common edict or admonition. Like AI is really good, but you don't just let it run off by itself and do everything. It's not that good yet.
[00:28:10:18 - 00:28:29:13]
Mallory
It's something we hear a lot from association leaders who want to create educational content, have events around AI for their profession, but they're also scared because they don't want to be liable for mistakes that AI make when their members are using it. So I'm curious for you, especially with hallucinations, which are less of an issue now, but still an issue.
[00:28:30:14 - 00:28:34:11]
Mallory
How do you combat that when you are providing your content?
[00:28:36:00 - 00:28:41:20]
Ernie
Well, I'm not worried about somebody suing me and all that stuff. And I don't think associations should be worried about that either.
[00:28:42:23 - 00:29:12:22]
Ernie
People worry about a lot of things, which if you stop and go do a search and see, like, "Yeah, has anybody been ever sued or reprimanded for that?" No one has. And you'd know they were because it would be the front page news all over the place. So the things that people worry about that aren't likely to happen, and if they did, will be understandable. Those really should be minimized. But what I do do constantly, especially with lawyers, is I tell them, "Look, let's break it down. Let's analyze how these things went awry."
[00:29:14:04 - 00:30:22:21]
Ernie
"Oh, this lawyer filed a brief with made-up citations." "Okay, let's really just not... We're not journalists trying to sensationalize. Let's analyze what happened." The lawyer completely trusted these citations and didn't check them. Well, you have to check the cases that your opponent cites and that other people cites, and if these cases are presented to you, you've never read them, you need to read them. So if they don't exist, you'd figure that out really quickly. And if they don't say what it's represented for them to say, "Well, first of all, lawyers and humans have been doing that for years, too," then you go, "Okay, well, I can't rely on that. I got to change it." So you have to do this hands-on word. That doesn't go away. So it's not that the AI is making mistakes, in my opinion, the way to frame it is the AI is exposing people who are lazy, complacent, or unethical, and that's what's going on. So to frame it in context of, "Well, AI hallucinates." Yeah, and what do humans do? They confabulate, they hallucinate, they lie. So what's the remedy for that? Well, check it. Check the work. But that's what you should be doing anyway.
[00:30:24:18 - 00:31:11:16]
Mallory
I love that. That's probably the soundbite for this episode. As you were saying, I'm like, "Man, that's perfect." So I was shouting down some notes, trying to sum up what your secret sauce is, kind of what lessons I think are applicable for associations. I think one, which we come back to a lot even in the age of AI, is that human connection piece. So having that, not in person, but that virtual meetup that you talked about twice a week, where lawyers can get together, that peer learning component is really powerful. And also some common sense sprinkled in there, I think human in the loop, not just saying, "Well, yeah, we're going to let AI run wild, and if it makes a mistake, it must suck," as opposed to, "We should be checking the outfit as well." Would you say I'm missing anything there? And you're agility probably too.
[00:31:11:16 - 00:32:19:14]
Ernie
No, but one thing did occur to me, and this is something that I think associations or anybody who does live events, which I'm not in a position to do a live event anymore. I used to do them, but it's too precarious now for her. You just don't know who's going to come at all, I think. But if one is going to do a live event, let's say a two-day event or whatever, where people are going to meet each other, if you combine an online community where people have already gotten to know each other, or you create a smaller... This is where you could prototype a community and go, "Okay, well, everybody's going to come to that event. We're going to put you in a space and let you get to know each other. We're going to have presentations that complement or set you up for whatever we're going to do live." Then you can not do live that, which could be done better online and in that way. And you can make the live event more about people truly getting to know each other in those spaces where that's just really hard to do otherwise. If I were running an event for Bar Association, that's another thing I would do. Every important live event, I'd have some sort of lead up to it that is happening on a platform like Circle.
[00:32:21:04 - 00:32:55:12]
Mallory
Some more episodic engagement. We talk about that in our book, Ascend, Unlocking the Power of AI for Associations, which I have right here because I'm working on the third edition with Amith. But we talk about the idea that you have an event and they're really powerful. I mean, Ernie, you probably know you go to these in-person events. You leave feeling almost electric, you have great conversations, and then it just dissipates. But I love the idea of having a buildup, having a tail in, or maybe it's not even a tail in. Maybe it's every month after the event. We have some sort of meetup, discuss the topic. So I think what you're saying is really important for associations.
[00:32:55:12 - 00:32:57:10]
Ernie
Yeah, exactly.
[00:32:58:13 - 00:33:09:06]
Ernie
That's exactly it. A lead up, some stuff that leads up, then they meet and they already know each other, and many of them know each other. And then it's not like, "Goodbye, it's over." They continue to engage.
[00:33:10:17 - 00:33:34:17]
Mallory
The things that I was mentioning to you, the human connection, the peer learning, the common sense, I mean, associations, you've got all that. The knowledge assistant, you might not have, I think that you should in my personal opinion. But you've got kind of all the ingredients. I think it's just in the age of AI, it's about reassessing how you put them together and always putting the member first too. I think that's something that's come up in this conversation.
[00:33:35:19 - 00:33:47:07]
Mallory
Members or lawyers in your case are coming to you saying, "We're worried about automation and outsourcing and marketing and all these things." Are you as an association serving those needs, or are you doing what you've always done?
[00:33:47:07 - 00:34:56:07]
Ernie
Right. And one last thing I'll mention, because this just popped in my head is one of the things that a platform like Circle and Circle definitely has this is they've reimagined, or maybe they just imagined, but they have like, every member has their profile. And they say, "Okay." And you can set up what feels they could fill in, but LinkedIn, Twitter, whatever, but also the headline and the bio and where they are, and you can add more things. And when there are posts happening in there, you can see quickly things about that member. So they make it very easy, basically frictionless for people to learn more about each other. That should be happening in every association. Don't think, "Well, if the Bar Association were to do what they probably go, "Well, we don't. We'll have their picture and their name," and very little information." I could see where 10 years ago, lawyers wouldn't want to share that, but they do now. They're used to Facebook. They're used to these other communities, and I run a community. And they put that information in there because they understand that that's an important way for people to get to know you quickly when they see your comment on something or what have you.
[00:34:56:07 - 00:35:03:20]
Mallory
Do you have to walk people through adding all that info to their profiles? Do you have to heavily encourage it?
[00:35:03:20 - 00:36:06:11]
Ernie
Okay. So that's one where I had to learn over time, iteratively how to make this happen, basically automation. So when people join, they take an onboarding course. And the onboarding course, I tell them, "Look, you're going to learn everything you need to learn in this part." Like lesson two in the course is why having a good profile is an important thing. And I show them two good profiles where people really are pretty open about what they do. And you read that profile and you're like, "Wow, I really want to get to know that lawyer. This person's a DJ. This person is a juggler." And you're like, "I want to learn about that." So you have to get them to understand the more you share, the better it is. So I don't tell them, "You must share." I just show them those examples. And then this was very time consuming. I took a lot of screenshots after those first two instances of a bunch of members whose profile picture and their headline was interesting. And I just said, "Here's a bunch of more examples." So when they're scrolling through all that, that's basically telling them, "You want to be like these people."
[00:36:08:04 - 00:36:14:05]
Mallory
That's great. I imagine our association listeners are going, "Yeah, well, we have profiles too and nobody fills them out." But I like that.
[00:36:14:05 - 00:36:35:24]
Ernie
And they didn't fill them out. They didn't fill them out for me either until I did that. That's the first thing that they see is in the course. And then you teach them other things like, "How do you engage with people? How do you attend an event? How do you get the chatbot to answer questions?" So all that stuff is covered in the course, but lesson two is the profile. So now people fill the profile out.
[00:36:37:02 - 00:36:37:21]
Ernie
They didn't before.
[00:36:37:21 - 00:36:47:16]
Mallory
It's a really good idea. I see that like peer pressure psychology is a part of your strategy, but it's smart. I mean, that's how humans work. So we might as well lean into the humans.
[00:36:47:16 - 00:36:50:09]
Ernie
Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
[00:36:50:09 - 00:37:30:22]
Mallory
Might be a good title for the episode. I wanted to mention too, I don't know if we've talked about this on the podcast, but Sad Lurie from the American Geophysical Union last year at Digital Now, which is our annual conference. We talked all about AI. We're going to talk all about AI again this year, but he gave a short presentation about how in their association they used AI to intelligently match members to one another who otherwise wouldn't have probably known the other existed, but with really like niche information about their research topics and interests, matching them. And they were able to increase profile views of members 42X.
[00:37:31:24 - 00:37:50:13]
Mallory
I know this because I'm writing about it right now in the third edition, but that's kind of another layer. Imagine you have all these member profiles nicely filled out. You've encouraged them to without dictating that they had to. And then you have an AI layer, maybe circle, roll, something like that out where you're intelligently matching individuals together. That's so powerful.
[00:37:50:13 - 00:39:06:11]
Ernie
So I thought about that, because I thought like I know that there's some people that would be compatible with others, but based on what criteria do I use to really nail that down other than my intuition, right? My intuition doesn't scale. So what I've started doing is I have, as I mentioned, I haven't people fill out an assessment. It's 50 questions. And somewhere along the way I asked AI, like, can you kind of help me categorize these into certain profile types? And it said, Oh, yes. And we went through this whole back and forth. And it came up with, you know, the juggler, the optimizer, the firefighter, and the freedom seeker. And so these questions allow me to categorize them and a hidden area in their profile. I put the results in there so that I always have that. If circle at some point allows the AI chatbot to access that and then match, that's very dense, useful information that it could, it could probably use. And I guess now that you alert me to that, I'll probably ask the circle people if they thought about that, or they could, because that would be the best. If somebody said, could you match me with somebody? And then it says, well, based on, you know, your profile and this other person's, we think these two people or these three people would probably be a good match.
[00:39:06:11 - 00:39:22:06]
Mallory
Yep. And I love that you said too, intuition is great, but it can't scale. I'm sure AI can pick up on things that we can't even see or patterns or people that seem dissimilar, but kind of like deep down, oh, they have this relation on, you know, this juggling issue that they're doing.
[00:39:23:19 - 00:39:27:08]
Mallory
Wow. Well, maybe we'll reach out to the circle team and let them know it should be on the roadmap.
[00:39:28:13 - 00:39:32:02]
Ernie
Yes, we'll both reach out and that'll probably be enough to tip the scales.
[00:39:32:02 - 00:39:34:01]
Mallory
Exactly. Just two of us.
[00:39:35:01 - 00:39:49:23]
Mallory
I'm curious in a broader sense in terms of AI and the legal profession, which is like such a broad statement to put on you, but like, where are you looking ahead to, what are you keeping an eye on? We talk a lot about agents on the podcast.
[00:39:51:02 - 00:39:56:15]
Mallory
I assume that's going to become something really profound in the legal profession too, but what, what are you watching?
[00:39:58:09 - 00:40:31:18]
Ernie
Yeah, agentic AI of course is like the big thing. And I think what I tell these lawyers in my group is like, look at where agentic AI is very, very primitive. And that's where, you know, it can watch something that's happening and then it can do something and then you have to approve it. So where I see that happening right now is with email. Like, and I gave this example, I use a couple of different email services and test them against each other. And I don't even remember which one now did this amazing thing, but somebody emails me and they're like, "Hey, Ernie,
[00:40:33:03 - 00:40:41:04]
Ernie
I'm curious if you know about..." because I live near two great restaurants, Patawant and Plantsees. And they said, "If you know about..."
[00:40:42:19 - 00:41:48:20]
Ernie
It was very vague what he said. Like, which one do you think is going to get the award? And I'm like, what are you talking about? And so he assumed that I knew that there's going to be a James Beard award now given, because that was a couple of months ago. And I thought, okay, well, if I search, you know, "Is James Beard coming?" Oh, yeah, James Beard is coming. But it constructed a response to this person who asked me this on my behalf, didn't send it, but it was a draft that I could approve that said, "Yes, I think the James Beard thing is going to be great. And I think Plantsees has an edge because their chef got that, you know, was celebrated in something recently." And I'm like, "Oh, no, they got a new chef." That's what it was. Plantsees got a new chef. Like, Plantsees got a new chef? I didn't know that. So there were two things I didn't know. And the answer was constructed better than me because it didn't simply answer or propose an answer in my voice, which that was amazing. It did research on its own to answer a vague question. That's agentic AI. And that's, for sure, it's coming in email, like soon. It's already here, basically.
[00:41:48:20 - 00:42:12:04]
Mallory
Yep. So definitely productivity, which is something I'm personally very excited about. Are you seeing a lot of industry specific, like domain specific AIs pop up within the legal profession? We don't talk a ton about law, but I don't know. Are there any that you think are notable or any that like have backing by a bar association? I don't even know if they do that, but I'm curious.
[00:42:12:04 - 00:43:04:15]
Ernie
Well, they may offer as a member benefit and get a work out of discount. But yeah, I mean, if you're a transactional lawyer, there's a whole bunch of them that help you build contracts and have forms and then have communities where the lawyers could share forms with other lawyers if they don't want to be competitive. And so you can draw on a pool of information and create contracts or certain types of documents that aren't related to litigation. And then separately in the litigation world, there's a whole bunch of different things that help you parse the documents you need to do with discovery and then creating motions or doing legal research. There's all kinds of specialized tools around those things, because then they can build the guardrails around whatever specialty factors need to be taken into consideration for those various things. Like with legal research, you have to make sure that case exists, all that kind of good stuff. So yeah, yeah, for sure. It's happening there in legal space,
[00:43:05:16 - 00:43:07:03]
Ernie
as I'm sure it will everywhere else.
[00:43:07:03 - 00:43:33:18]
Mallory
Right. And that's something we talk about a two a lot on the pod is those domain specific AIs. And we had one leader of semantic health, which was like a medical coding auditing company that was acquired by the American Academy of Professional Coders, AAPC, I think. So I think it's just something to consider to keep an eye on. Maybe there's partnership there. Maybe it's a member benefit for the associations that are listening.
[00:43:33:18 - 00:45:21:22]
Ernie
Yeah. Well, there's a huge opportunity because like, let's say there's one product called ViewIQ. We had the founder come on our podcast. He's in Atlanta. And he has solved the problem of going through medical records, because those are a particular type of document that has its own unique problems. And he has talked about how he has to solve a lot of things manually. You can't just throw it at AI. So he's building this company. He wants to reach more lawyers. If you were a bar association and you were able to understand like, wow, this guy's doing a great thing. He is one of the good guys. He's building this company. Let's reach out to him, help him grow his thing. That's going to make us look good. Because that's how I look at it. I'm like, I don't want them to give me some kind of affiliate thing. I never do that. I'm like, you're making me look good if you help them. And I can say I introduce you, right? So if they help the bar association members, bar association looks good, but you just can't be afraid to recommend people. You got to vet them. You got to go, look, that person's doing good. They're a good guy. And that's another place where I think bar associations or associations in general, they don't want to decide who's better than other people. Oh, I'm sorry. Some people are better than other people. And also it's obvious that in many cases, some are better or more earnest and more ethical or whatever. And that's your job as a bar association or as an association. You should be able to figure out who to promote first. And sorry if the other people are unhappy about it. Say, line up. We'll evaluate you and then we'll promote you. But that's what people want. And bar associations aren't delivering that.
[00:45:21:22 - 00:45:30:21]
Mallory
And as you said, associations in general, I don't think there's any better organization suited to make that opinion. Exactly.
[00:45:31:24 - 00:45:44:00]
Mallory
So being neutral might feel, I don't know, morally right or admirable or whatever that may be. But the fact is your members need to know. And they're going to figure it out on their own or through industry influencers or through. Right.
[00:45:44:00 - 00:47:29:09]
Ernie
And this is where the incentives get in the way. And I saw this, I'll leave a name name. So they were in the, so if you run an event, a CLE event, you want sponsors. Sponsors pay money. If you say anything negative about the sponsor, that's, you know, oh, well then they won't give us money. So there is this company called Fine Law. I assume it still exists. For years and years and years, people knew that Fine Law's methodology of getting lawyers to do the website and whatnot, that just wasn't working. They weren't a good company. Everyone knew this. Okay. Now, you weren't allowed to say this on the stage if they were the sponsor. Right. But at first when I was the speaker, I was like, wait, you don't like Fine Law? Okay. I thought that was a little weird. And then to find out this other person, and then you'd ask lawyers. The lawyers would like talk about Fine Law. But Fine Law was really good at, because they had to do SEO and they made it so that their complaints were not visible. Right. So it was a self-sealing thing. But that's what I'm saying. Like somebody should be able to walk into the Bar Association and go, you know, that sponsor money from that company, don't take that money so that you can now have people speak honestly. That's what needs to happen. But if it doesn't happen through Bar Associations, it will happen now through me, other organizations, Facebook. There was a time when they could control that message and Fine Law could be guaranteed or whoever could be guaranteed that their negative way of acting wasn't going to be exposed, but they can. And so the Bar Association should just say, no, we're not going to take money from people. We're not going to take money from sponsors. We'll let you sponsor if we feel like you're a good sponsor and you send a speaker or something, some other thing like that, but not just give us money and it goes to the bottom line.
[00:47:30:20 - 00:47:33:21]
Ernie
It's going to poison your ability to speak honestly.
[00:47:35:15 - 00:47:56:13]
Mallory
And information at this point is everywhere and easily accessible to everyone. So there's got to be something else to your strategic moat there. That's a great point, Ernie. Well, this has been a really interesting conversation and I hope so too for our listeners. Ernie, where can people follow you, check out your work, share your links, please.
[00:47:56:13 - 00:48:15:05]
Ernie
I'm real easy to find. Just search for Ernie the Attorney and you will find my website. I am very fine of a Londoner date. Although I've learned from many attorneys who say, well, you know, you're not the only Ernie the Attorney or you're not the first one. Well, I guess I was the first one with a blog and I did more online. So, you know, when people search with that, they usually find me.
[00:48:16:17 - 00:48:37:16]
Mallory
And I can't help but thinking at the beginning of this conversation, we were talking about, you know, going paperless, which seems forever ago at this point, but really wasn't all that long ago. And I feel like now we are in that same situation with AI. Like all of you listeners, you're taking the right step by listening to podcasts like this one, but your associations, do you want to be the associations that are going
[00:48:37:16 - 00:48:43:02]
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Mallory
Thanks for tuning into the Sidecar Sync podcast. If you want to dive deeper into anything mentioned in this episode, please check out the links in our show notes. And if you're looking for more in-depth AI education for you, your entire team, or your members, head to sidecar.ai.
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