Fresh Voices on Legal Tech with Tiffany Graves

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

Intro: Web 2.0. Innovation, trends, collaboration. Software, metadata. Got the world turning as fast as it can? Hear how technology can help. Legally speaking, with two of the top legal technology experts, authors, and lawyers: Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Welcome to The Kennedy-Mighell Report, here on, The Legal Talk Network.

Dennis Kennedy: And welcome to Episode 341 of The Kennedy-Mighell Report. I’m Dennis, Kennedy in Ann Arbor.

Tom Mighell: And I’m Tom Mighell in Dallas.

Dennis Kennedy: In our last episode we shared our summer reading list. In this episode, we’re excited to bring you another guest in our Fresh Voices on Legal Tech series with another very special guest. In this series, we want to showcase different and compelling perspectives on Legal Tech and more topics than just Tech.  We have another fabulous guest. Tom, what’s on our agenda for this episode?

Tom Mighell: Well, Dennis in this edition of the Kennedy-Mighell Report we are thrilled to continue our Fresh Voices on Legal Tech interview series with Tiffany Graves, Pro Bono Counsel at Bradley Arany Boult Cummings, adjunct professor at the University of Virginia Law School, one of the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center as Women of Legal Tech and a whole lot more. We want our Fresh Voices Series to not only introduce you to terrific leaders in Legal Tech space but also provide you with their perspective on the things that you ought to be thinking about. So we’re glad to have her here. As usual we’ll finish up with our parting shots that Onetip website or observation that you can start to use the second that this podcast is over. But first up, we are so pleased to welcome Tiffany Graves to our Fresh Voices Series. Tiffany, welcome to the Kennedy-Mighell Report.

Tiffany Graves: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Tom Mighell: Before we get started can you tell us a little about yourself? Tell us what your role at Bradley is? What you’re doing at the University of Virginia, and how you got it to all those places.

Tiffany Graves: Sure. I am originally from Winchester, Virginia, went to college at Hollins University which is in Roanoke, Virginia, southwestern part of the state and Law School at the University of Virginia, and have been living in Mississippi since I graduated from Law School in 2006. I am currently Pro Bono Counsel at Bradley as you said. Immediately before that was the Executive Director of the Mississippi Access to Justice Commission. And prior to that was the executive Director and General Counsel of the Mississippi Volunteer Lawyers Project.

Before making the transition to public interest work, I practiced for about four and a half years on the civil defense side where I did labor and employment work, some insurance defense and products liability. So, I’ve spent time in both private practice and on the public interest side and I’m back at the firm now as Pro Bono Counsel where it’s the position that I described as the best of both worlds because I get to have the resources and support of a large law firm to mobilize lawyers and to service to people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to access the services provided by Bradley lawyers. So that’s I think one of the things that makes the position pretty unique. And in terms of what I do as Pro Bono Counsel, it is a full-time firm-wide position. Bradley has 11 offices throughout the south and as I said, I’m in Jackson, based in our Jackson, Mississippi office. And my role was really to support our pro bono program to make sure that we are making opportunities available for our attorneys to do pro bono, supporting them in their pro bono activities and also working very closely with legal services organizations and other nonprofits, local state and national to deliver services to people who again, would not otherwise have access to lawyers. So it’s a great role. It’s something that I have really enjoyed doing. It allows me to really take the skills and knowledge that I was able to gain as a private practitioner and also, the time that I was able to spend in public interest to bring those together to merge those experiences in ways that allow a firm like Bradley and we have about 625 attorneys now to really make an impact in the communities where we live and work.

Tom Mighell: Tiffany, It’s such a cool career path and that in itself is interesting but I kind of you referenced a couple of things that I think will probably relate to technology. And so what is, you know, just sort of working across 11 offices. Now, I know that sometimes and people know this, I get frustrated with how difficult it still is to explain technology whether it’s old technology or new technology, and its benefits to those in the legal profession especially to help them understand how it will actually help the people they serve. And I’ve liked the way that you’ve talked about technology and its practical use in the pro bono space which some people don’t really associate with technology. Can you just talk about your approach whether it’s inside the firm or outside about how you talk to lawyers and others in the legal profession about technology and how they can use it to help them do what they do?

(00:05:29)

Tiffany Graves: Sure. You know, prior as I mentioned to coming to Bradley, I was in charge of our Access to Justice Program in Mississippi. And like most Access to Justice Commissions, our work was designed to improve the civil justice system in Mississippi, the delivery of civil legal services to people who are low income and without the means to be able to afford lawyers. And I think that’s probably where I spent a lot of time talking about how legal technology can really be beneficial in the access to justice space, and can be really tremendous in facilitating access to justice and access to civil legal supports. I think when I approach these conversations, I say to people lawyers are not enough and we’ve got to have other resources in the hands of people to help them not only diagnose their legal issues, but also try to resolve them. And as pro bono counsel, I obviously wave the pro bono flag all the time, 100% of my time, but I also recognize that pro bono is only one piece of a much bigger puzzle to solving kind of the access to justice crisis in our country. There have to be more tools and resources at our disposal and that’s where I think technology really comes into play and that’s really how I talk with people and say we use technology in so many aspects of our lives, and we don’t question it. We just use it.

You know, earlier today, I was on a flight and being able to scan your boarding pass and sort of navigate the airport without really having to engage a whole lot with people because you have this technology in your hand to do it, we don’t question using technology and other aspects of our lives. I don’t understand why we think it’s unacceptable and in the legal space and more importantly than just sort of developing a comfort level with it because it’s something that we do in so many other areas of our lives recognizing that there aren’t enough lawyers to address all of the legal needs that exist among people in low-income communities. There have to be other ways to be able to get people the resources and information and tools they need to be able to resolve their issues on their own. I know that the two of you are aware how many people are standing up in courts as we speak on their own without lawyers and trying to do the best they can with backspin and issues that would overwhelm many lawyers if they had to handle some of these things on their own.

So to the extent that we can help people with documents with just an ability to access information about what sort of legal issue they may be encountering and how they might approach talking with a judge and of how they might research these issues on their own to the extent that we can empower people in that way. I think that’s something we should all be supportive of. So, that is how I typically have these conversations with people. There aren’t enough of us to address these issues so let’s do what we can to make sure that we put as much in the hands of people so that they can feel empowered enough to handle things on their own.

Tom Mighell: So let’s take that and flip it a little bit. We talked about the need to use technology and the fact that lawyers are not enough that we see the need. I will say when you gave your introduction, I find I knew we had some things in common. I didn’t realize we had more things in common. I spent more time in insurance defense than you probably did, but I was an insurance defense lawyer and at least during the first 10 years of my practice, I was known as the pro bono lawyer in my firm whether that’s a good or a bad thing I don’t know. I mean it was kind of a little bit of both but me practicing in the 1990s and the 2000s, there was not lot of technology around that would support the pro bono effort that was useful beyond what I was already using to support my other clients but things have changed a lot since then although I would imagine there’s still a lot of challenges. You’ve described some challenges already, but I kind of want to figure and get your opinion on what’s the current state of technology in the pro bono space and also the broader access to justice space as well and maybe how our law firm is doing in pro bono and technology these days. What does that look like?

(00:10:02)

Tiffany Graves: You know, I think these are exciting times in technology even in the access to justice and pro bono spaces and it gives me great hope frankly for the future. I think companies, nonprofits are doing a much better job of assessing the needs of the communities that we’re trying to serve. I think we operate from a space as lawyers where we feel like we have all the answers and we know exactly what people need and what’s going to be you know, what’s going to work for them and what’s going to help them resolve their legal issues? And we haven’t always done a good job of really getting in touch with the communities we’re trying to serve and asking them what they need and making sure these tools that we’re developing are actually user-friendly and not just something that we can manage and use but that the people who were actually creating them for can use them and find them beneficial. So I think that’s been something that I’ve seen over the more recent years is there seems to be more of an effort to bring in the users when we’re developing these tools and technologies. And that’s significant because you’re right. So much of this did not exist long ago and not that long ago so to be able to make sure that what we’re creating is actually stuff that people can use is crucial.

So, it’s exciting to see these new technologies, you know, some that help diagnose legal issues because one of the things that I think we’re all aware of is not everybody knows that they have a legal problem. So when you see technology that’s out there that like lawsuit, for example, where you just go in there and you get some sort of foundational knowledge because we make a lot of assumptions about what people know and don’t know about what problems they’re encountering. So to see that there are resources out there that just provide information, that is huge for people who don’t have access to lawyers. So I think there are things out here where we’re really seeing more of an effort to meet people where they are. And I think that is something that it’s been exciting for me to see in recent years.

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, I’d like to talk about my former CEO when I was at MasterCard, Ajay Banga who always talked about doing well by doing good and which I think is just a really helpful for us. And I’m intrigued by what your firm is doing on a pro bono side and its commitment to it and maybe we could get you to talk a little bit about your perspective on how pro bono efforts of that type of scale help the law firm look in different ways including branding the benefits to the lawyers as well and sort of with the areas you go into. Is it all on the sort of litigation side and I ask that because some of my law students are interested in what I would call a pro bono small business? How can they help like the restaurant owners, the Mom and Pop stores and stuff like that who really don’t have, I mean they’re just making ends meet and so a legal challenge is going to be really difficult and that seems like an interesting area of pro bono? I don’t know whether you’ve started touch on that.

Tiffany Graves: Yes. I mean I think the fact that Bradley has a full-time pro bono counsel, certainly speaks to the investment that the firm has made into pro bono work and into serving people in the communities again where we live and work who just don’t have access to lawyers. We do pro bono in a variety of ways and in fact, one of my directives when coming into this role was we want to expand the depth and scope of services that we are providing to people in need and we need someone who can coordinate those efforts, who can find those opportunities, who can help us deepen our impact in these 11 places where we have Bradley offices and that is what I’ve been doing over the last five plus years.

We do a ton of work in capital defense. We’ve got over 20 death penalty cases at the firm, and that has been something that Bradley has been involved in four decades, that work. And that’s obviously a way to get our litigators engaged in pro bono work. So, we do a ton of litigation pro bono like most firms our size, but we also do transactional work and to your question, Dennis about support for small businesses in three of our offices currently. We have very specific programs that are aimed at supporting black owned businesses and black led nonprofit organizations. And like a lot of firms, Bradley wanted to on the heels of some of the racial unrest of 2020 find some ways to better support and provide greater support to Black communities in our footprint.

(00:15:11)

And interestingly, the start of what is now our Black owned small business and nonprofit clinic in our Nashville office came to us by way of two associates who said listen, I’m a transactional lawyer. I don’t want to be in a courtroom but I know I want to do something to sort of address some of these issues that I’m seeing in the Nashville community where Black businesses are failing and because I do this every day in my billable work, I’d love to be able to develop a pro bono project that will enable me to provide the same type of support that I give to businesses that pay us at Bradley to businesses who don’t have those means, to people who are just starting off and just trying to figure out how do I form this business? Is it an LLC? Is it an S Corp? Is it some other creature, those kinds of things?

So every month in our Nashville and Birmingham offices, we have a legal clinic where we have per se emerging business owners, people who just have an idea and need someone to really tell them whether or not it’s a good idea and something they should pursue. And I have our corporate and transactional attorneys meet with them to provide guidance, to provide consultations about how they might start this business or they’ll give us a contract to take a look at. Can you review this? Make some suggestions for how this can be written better. We also handle intellectual property. I have this snazzy name for my business that’s tagline and I want to make sure it’s something I can use. On the nonprofit side, we do a lot of advising on formation and bylaws and nonprofit governance type issues. It has been an extremely popular pro bono initiative for our transactional attorneys, folks like your law students who this is what they do. This is what the legal career they’ve decided they want to have but they also want to do pro bono and to the extent that they can sort of marry those interest. We are providing that through these clinics in our Birmingham and Nashville offices.

The other thing that we do in our Charlotte office is, we are part of this initiative called the Charlotte initiative to mobilize businesses, the acronym of CLIMB, same thing there although instead of the clinic format, we are actually taking on matters for extended representation. So these are people who were actually going to help you form that LLC or we’re going to help you with forming our nonprofit and filing the 501(c)(3) paperwork. So those are ways that we are engaging the transactional side of the house in some of our pro bono work but one of the things I really do enjoy about our program is that it really does touch on so many areas. It makes it fun for me and the thing that I think I like the most is that people can come to me with ideas and I see it as my responsibility to help make them a reality and that Black business clinic in Nashville, the launch of that one in January 2021, is the perfect example of that.

Dennis Kennedy: I love that idea. I mean I had a student who in one of my classes wrote a business plan along the same lines for a potential small business who is going to be Black on but for Flint Michigan, but basically looking at the dry cleaners, the restaurants, the sort of family businesses and it just such a cool idea, and as a transactional lawyer myself in pro bono, he always had these offers of these things he had no skills in and to do something that you’re actually uses your skillset to do good is really a cool approach.

Tom Mighell: That’s definitely something that when I was practicing law was not even a thing. You couldn’t get the transactional lawyers to do pro bono. It wasn’t none of this was even conceived of so I agree. I think it’s a terrific idea. Let’s pivot a little bit to technology. Let’s talk about a little bit more about technology as you probably know, Tiffany, we tend to talk about collaboration technology on this podcast occasionally. And so of course, one of our questions is going to be about collaboration. Tell us about some of your favorite ways to collaborate whether it’s in the pro bono space or whether it’s collaborating with other co-workers or colleagues or other groups. What are the collaboration tools or other technologies that you find are particularly useful?

Tiffany Graves: Well, it’s certainly no secret that I couldn’t do my job without collaborating both internally with our lawyers, but also externally with legal services organizations and other nonprofits. They are sort of the base of our client referral source. So I am engaging with people who can send us clients and put us to work on the pro bono side on a daily basis and I really do enjoy interacting with those organizations because they are on the frontlines of access to justice work so those are the people I collaborate with regularly.

(00:20:23)

We also do a lot of collaboration with our clients. We do pro bono projects with the people that are our billable clients and that’s something I enjoy as well creating those corporate pro bono partnerships, those opportunities for us to work, collaboratively to serve people in need and also deepen our working relationships with one another because we are doing something that we’re both finding meaningful and rewarding but also spending time with one another in ways that it’s outside of maybe the, you know, adverse situation that that litigation and just working together as lawyers can bring. So those are fun partnerships to be around as well.

On the technology side I’m engaging with our IT people at the firm regularly to make sure that what we’re doing within our program, we’re doing it efficiently. For us, as lawyers and people who are volunteering on these pro bono programs but also for our clients or other ways that we can be meeting with our clients that helps them more.  As we all know, the last couple of years have made kind of remote meetings even more predominant than ever. So you know, we have as a firm, particularly with our pro bono cases had to think about what are ways that we can adapt and adjust pivot like the entire world is so that the needs of our pro bono clients continue to be addressed.

So I had worked with our IT to make sure that the legal clinics that we do have virtual components and that we are equipped to meet with our clients and that our clients are also equipped with the tools they need to meet with us. Part of this and this is no secret, when you’re dealing with lower income communities who may or may not have the same level of access to technology that we do at our firms, you have to make adjustments. So we have had to think through that on occasion when there are hearings particularly, we had a lot of immigration-related hearings, even during the time of COVID and navigating all of that. So we were working frequently with IT to make sure that we have the support that we needed to support our clients and that they weren’t overwhelmed with everything that was going on at the time and thinking that in any way it would delay the progress of their legal matters.

So they here for me often as we are trying to continue to make ourselves as available to our clients as possible to the organizations that we partner with. Some of the legal services organizations were not equipped with the same technology that we were as law firms. So in some instances, we were finding ways to support our legal services partners so that they could deliver services not just to the clients that Bradley was serving, but all of their clients. So, it’s been nice to be a part of some of those efforts to know that we’re not only supporting our partners but also our communities.

Dennis Kennedy: We’ve got a bunch more questions for Tiffany, but before we get to them, we’re going to take a quick break for a message from our sponsors.

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Dennis Kennedy: And we’re back with Tiffany Graves of Bradley Arany Boult Cummings LLP. Tiffany, what is happening now in Legal Tech that excites you or seems to have the most potential and since I teach students, what are those technologies do you wish that new lawyers were coming in to the practice with as well. It might be slightly different answers to those questions but kind of curious what exciting out there that you see?

(00:25:04)

Tiffany Graves: Well, at the top, I know Tom mentioned that I teach a short course at the University of Virginia Law School. And the title of that course is ‘Advancing the Commitment to Public Service Through Law Firm Pro Bono’. And naturally it’s, it’s all about law firm pro bono. How pro bono programs are formed, how people like me manage and administer and find pro bono opportunities and those sorts of things.

Another part of that class as I talk about legal technology in the pro bono space, and what is so interesting to me is when I talk about some of the pushback that some of the legal technologists experience when trying to bring technology to access to justice. And we specifically talk about Upsolve and some of the challenges that have existed there in the bankruptcy space. And I let them listen to the TED talk about Upsolve and it’s amazing to me — it’s not amazing to me, but it’s interesting to me how the students are just — they just cannot believe that there’s not support for technology like that.

When you hear the story of someone who has this amazing amount of medical debt and all they’re trying to do is access the tools, the forms, the knowledge necessary to have their debt disappear through bankruptcy and that people aren’t supportive of that. So it’s encouraging to me and I’m sure you see this, Dennis too, the reception that these students have to some of the technology that we’re seeing happening and, and not just the access to justice space but in the profession and frankly in the world as in general.

They are ready for this and, and they understand how important and valuable it is and I think it’s so important for us as teachers to make them aware of this so that they can continue to be advocates for it once they become lawyers. But that’s one of my favorite things to teach because when I — part of that conversation is the challenges that Upsolve and similar technologies have had in the legal space because of regulatory issues and all of those things that we know, they’re shocked that people just aren’t open to having things are going to help people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to have their issues resolved.

In terms of the technology that I am excited about seeing, we do a lot of work in support of victims of domestic violence and survivors of sexual assault. And when I see technology that allows people in those very dangerous and stressful situations, to be able to effectively capture evidence that they can take to protection order hearings and those sorts of things. That type of technology, I just always enjoy seeing and it’s technology that we suggest to our clients when we’re representing them. Our nonprofit partners make them aware of it and then our lawyers are very engaged in finding ways that our clients can be able. Because those are situations where you have to be very careful in how you’re capturing evidence that you’re going to take to those hearings.

So knowing that there‘s app technology out there that can help people in those situations, that’s a big one. Another thing that I’d like to see are technology like TurnSignl, in the wake of back to what we were talking about, racial unrest and George Floyd and you hear some of these things, when there’s technology out there that allows people to record their interactions with police, we are always hopeful that nothing goes wrong. That there aren’t any issues and some of the stuff that we’ve seen happen in our country, it never gets to that level, it never escalates to those situations. But when you see that there’s this increase in technology, the ACLU with Mobile Justice, technology out there that allows people to capture those moments so that if anything ever does go the wrong way, we at least have something on video to document what has happened. That’s something else that I think is crucial and something else that I’ve been excited to see in the legal technology space.

Tom Mighell: So, let’s go a little far afield of what the legal technology is currently out there that you’re seeing and talk about kind of what the news is hyping these days. It seems like every other technology story these days is about ChatGPT, I guess every other story other than that is about Apple’s New Vision Pro headset, but that seems to be all I see these days. I will always be surprised if we can get through an episode without Dennis mentioning ChatGPT.

(00:30:00)

So that’s why I’m asking the question in this episode. The hype is crazy around ChatGPT, but lawyers are definitely finding use cases that we’re just starting to discover and experiment with. What do you see as the — are you seeing ChatGPT’s either start to play a role in pro bono and access to justice or do you see areas where it can potentially do that in the future?

Tiffany Graves: I think I see more of the latter and others may be observing it more widely used than I am. I see the potential for it. You’ve heard me mention a few times about people not always recognizing that they even have a legal problem. I think ChatGPT’s ability to even help people do the research necessary to make that type of assessment and, “oh, this really is something, and I need a lawyer. I need to reach out to a legal aid organization”, that diagnosis piece I think can be helpful and the research that people can get from that. Thinking about the document creation, that’s another one potentially, to the extent that people can create legal pleadings that help them get into court, using some of this technology, I think that also has the potential to be helpful.

There are lots of forms out there from these days, thankfully, that are available to people who are pro se and trying to navigate their legal issues on their own, but not everything is out there. I think of a situation that came up very recently where someone was attempting to get divorced and the chancellor said, “I can grant this divorce, but I need you to file a petition to disestablish paternity for one of your children”. So the person who is not a lawyer says, “okay, where do I find the form to do that?” And the judge says, “It doesn’t exist.” What can you do with that? What can you do with that? Fortunately, this woman knew a lawyer or the lawyer who happened to be a friend who shared this story with me. And the friend said, “what in the world are people doing?”

When they’re told by a judge, “sorry, this doesn’t exist, so you’ll just have to kind of figure out how to do it, and there’s an affidavit that’s required and all of these things.” So I am hopeful that some of this, ChatGPT, other technology that may be on the horizon will have the potential to help people create these sorts of documents. Where they can say, “this is what it is, this is what it needs to do”. And some semblance of something is produced that they can at least take into court and get some judge to look at and provide some advice on whether or not they’re getting close to what it is that they want. But that happens far too often in a lot of our courts, in our trial courts. So the hope is that maybe some of this technology can help with that.

Dennis Kennedy: You know that’s like the perfect example of what people have been talking about ChatGPT in connection with courts especially, is to be able to say like, “could you explain like you’re talking to a human, what that form is about? And then put it in language that people can understand.” You can kind of dial up and down like the reading level and stuff like that. And I’ve heard judges point to that as something that has some, some really interesting potential. I guess as we start to wrap up this segment. I love the thing that you were talking about using technology to gather evidence. So I think that’s really given me a lot to think about and I see the value of that. But what are sort of the – you are lawyers who are doing a lot of the pro bono, what one or two technologies would you like to see them really focus on and learn right now? I mean, it could be Word obviously, it could be Zoom, it could be other things. But what are the things that you think would really benefit people to get a couple of technologies to get really good at?

Tiffany Graves: I had a call recently with one of our legal aid partners in Nashville and I said, “I’ve got some lots of new lawyers in the office. But they’re green. So we’ve got to think about how we get them engaged in pro bono work that will make them want to keep taking pro bono cases. So talk with me about what are your high-priority areas and how I can engage these sort of brand new lawyers into helping your organization and your clients?” And he said, “well, two of our biggest areas of need are estate planning and expunction. We just don’t have enough lawyers, helping people prepare wills and helping people — help others get their criminal records expunged.” And that led me to do some research on my own about what sort of technologies exist, because while I can certainly mobilize our attorneys to take on some of these cases.

(00:35:03)

When he talked about how many people are currently in their docket with those particular needs, I thought, “Woo, got to barely scratch the surface of the need here.” And, and maybe one of the things that we can do is at least sort of help you assess who might have the ability to be able to access one of these apps and do some of this on their own. Be able to reach out to us as they need to review the documents that they create through some of this technology, but really kind of empower them to do what they can using app and other technology. And Trust & Will is a really great technology for something like that. Cake is another one that we’ve discovered, and I had – I asked some of our associates, “can you look to see what’s out there that we can not only help the clients, but help our non-profit partners, be able to kind of direct people to some of these resources?”

Those are great ones. On the expunction side, there are a number of apps and other technologies that help people determine whether or not they’re eligible for expunction. And of course, that’s very state-specific and not to say estate planning isn’t but there’s some generalities I think with that, that aren’t necessarily true with expunction. Some states allow. Felony, expunction, some don’t. Those sorts of things. So there are some great technology in terms of determining whether or not you have an arrest, conviction or charge that’s eligible for expunction. But then there’s technology like the Louisiana Justice and Accountability Center has where they actually — if you were determined to be eligible for expunction, then direct you to the forms that you can fill out through the website and be able to produce and file.

So, that sort of takes it to the next step for people because as you might imagine, when people have criminal records that prevents them from accessing certain benefits, getting jobs, so as we think about facilitating access beyond just people’s legal needs, let’s make sure holistically that we are helping them get access to other things that they need to be able to be productive and sort of function in this world. So, those are technologies that we as a firm and I personally am making it sort of a task to know more about so that we can refer our clients to those and also make our non-profit partners aware so that it may be an a way to build in additional capacity for them to help some of these people that they just can’t get to through pro bono or through their staff attorneys alone.

Tom Mighell: All right. We’ve got a few more questions for Tiffany, but before we do that, we’re going to take a break for a quick word from our sponsors.

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Dennis Kennedy: And now, let’s get back to the Kennedy Mile report. I am Dennis Kennedy.

Tom Mighell: And I’m Tom Mighell and we are joined by our special guest, Tiffany Graves of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings. We’ve got just a couple more questions that we finish up with, and these are kind of our standard fresh voices, questions that we like to end up with. The first one we call ‘Our good advice question’, which is what is the best advice either that you’ve been given around technology or what advice would you like to leave our listeners with before you go? Either one or both?

Tiffany Graves: Well, I’ll say this. Before I transitioned into public interest work, before I went to the Volunteer Lawyers Project and private practice; I didn’t use a whole lot of technology. I didn’t know what technology there was, particularly in the access to justice and pro bono space. And it didn’t take long into coming into the Volunteer Lawyers Project and realizing how many people were reaching out to us and how many people we weren’t able to help just by pro bono alone. And we didn’t have any staff attorneys.

(00:40:02)

So we knew we were pretty much relying on our pro bono support to do everything. I quickly realized we needed some other tools at our disposal. And that’s when some of the lessons that I’m going to share now are lessons that I had to really listen to and focus on and trying to make sure that we expanded the support we were providing to our clients. Being open, listening, learning, and more importantly, being curious. It’s so easy to say, “okay, now there’s ChatGPT and there’s AI, and now there are these hologram technologies. It’s too much. I can’t keep up with all of this. We can’t do that.” We do need to keep up with all of this. I obviously come from the perspective of someone who is pro bono counsel and my focus is really on that. But I work at a law firm and we have to constantly be aware of the latest and greatest and how it can help us serve all of our clients, not just our pro bono clients.

So being curious, doing your research, paying attention to what’s out there. What’s working for some what’s not, what has the potential to really help you streamline your efforts and be a good firm to your clients? As I said before, we already use technology in so many ways in our lives. So I think it’s — there’s no reason why we should not be open to how technology can and should be used in the legal space. So I think again, just sort of being open to what’s happening and learning about it, not running away from it, being scared of it. Seeing it as just too much to learn and figure out, but being open to what’s out there and really thinking through how it could benefit you and your practice pro bono or otherwise.

Dennis Kennedy: So let’s wrap up with what I call ‘the Fresh Voices question’ and I like calling this series, we’re doing Fresh Voices because one of the things that attracted me to this approach was that I’ve noticed people who’ve kind of found their own voices in the world of technology and you, to me, are one of the best examples of somebody really finding a voice in social media and on Twitter. I mean, it’s authentic. It’s funny, I mean, like your approach is so great and it is just really interesting to see how you’ve captured that and how that translates into the things that you’re doing. But who are the other fresh voices for you in legal tech that you would like to single out?

Tiffany Graves: So I’m going to mention a group and that’s the Justice Tech Association, and I’m sure that’s a, a group that you all are aware of and probably a lot of people who listen to this podcast. I was so excited to see when the association was formed. And of course it helps that a lot of these folks are people I consider friends and people I admire for the very inspiring work that they are doing to kind of expand knowledge and the scope of tech resources for people, particularly who are challenged with accessing legal services. So I see them — they’re not all fresh voices, but I think as being a part of the – it’s like establishing the Justice Tech Association, that is a fresh voice in this space. And I’m excited to see really what they are going to do collectively to really move the needle in Justice Tech.

Tom Mighell: All right. Well, thank you very much Tiffany Graves, we want to thank you for being a guest on the podcast. Can you — before we head out here, can you tell our listeners where they can learn more about you or where they can connect with you if they want?

Tiffany Graves: Oh, sure. So I’m at Bradley, so I’m — I’ve got a page on the website which lists my contact information. As Dennis mentioned, I’m also on Twitter at tifmgraves and I’m pretty active there. LinkedIn just at Tiffany M. Graves as well. So those are some of the best ways to reach out to me.

Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. Thank you so much, Tiffany. You’re a fantastic guests, great information, great advice and you gave me so much to think about with the things that you talked about, but now it’s time for our parting shots, that one tip website or observation you can use the second this podcast ends. Tiffany, take it away.

Tiffany Graves: So you heard me mention hologram technology. So, I read an article very recently in the ABA Journal about William and Mary’s Center for Legal and Court Technology and how the students are experimenting with hologram witnesses. And I just think that that has such great potential. Again, age of COVID and how we have really realized how much can be done remotely, and particularly with the communities that we work with on the pro bono side, not everyone has the same access to technology, access to transportation.

(00:45:03)

So, when you think about the potential for people to appear as hologram witnesses in hearings, that’s kind of exciting. So that’s something that I think people might want to look into and the William and Mary’s Center for Legal and Court Technology sort of has space on their page where they talk about what they’re doing in this.

The other thing from a law student side is it allows you to do moot court and mock trials using hologram witnesses. So I think from a legal education standpoint and just people getting familiar with handling cases and trials before they actually start practicing, it has that training potential. But I think beyond that, it has the potential to really make things even more accessible for people who are participating in court proceedings. So I think that’s something that I would hope people would look into. I know I’m going to follow it.

Tom Mighell: I am really interested about that and I’m hoping that the technology has improved from — I guess, who was it Will-I-Am, that was in a hologram on the Superbowl, or I forget where it was that we saw them and then the Star Wars holograms. I hope that the technology — I’m sure it has improved since then but that sounds really interesting and exciting. My parting shot is about pass keys. We talk a lot on this show about passwords. We talk about how password managers are something everybody needs to have, but very few people have them and good password management. Well, the industry has been trying to eliminate passwords and this is really the first step. And it’s finding ways to make your devices be able to let you log in instead of knowing all of the passwords for all the sites that you have. Google has really gotten a start with this. If you happen to have Google accounts, Gmail accounts, or other things like that, you can set up your computer or your phone as a pass key for all of your accounts, so you never have to log in again.

I’ve just got an email this week from 1Password, that’s my password manager. They’re rolling out extensions that allow you to also use pass keys at certain websites or if you’re a developer, you can develop pass keys for your website. So I’m very excited. We’re hitting the next phase of “password liberation”, I guess I’ll call it. And we’ll see where it takes us. Dennis?

Dennis Kennedy: So, a while back I had to get a new Windows laptop at work and I started using it and I noticed that I was accidentally hitting the caps lock key and typing in all caps and like a couple other annoyances and it reminded me that on the previous laptop, I had remapped of keys and shut off the caps lock in particular. Now, the way you do that in Windows is use a utility called Microsoft Power Toys that Microsoft makes available. And there was a great post on the How to Geek blog recently that explained all the different Power Toys that are in there. And there’s like a bunch of just small little things that can be annoying to you or you say, “I wish I could do this”, or “I wish there was a way to do that.” And Power Toys often gives you just these little utilities like the Keyboard Mapper that can really make your life using your computer a lot easier.

Tom Mighell: All right, so that wraps it up for this edition of the Kennedy-Mighell Report. Thank you for joining us on the podcast. You can find show notes for this episode on the Legal Talk Network’s page for the show. You can find all of our previous podcasts along with transcripts on the Legal Talk Network website. If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can always reach out to us on LinkedIn decreasingly on Twitter. And remember, you can leave us a voicemail. We still want to get your questions for our B Segments. That number is (720) 441-6820. So until the next podcast, I’m Tom Mighell.

Dennis Kennedy: And I’m Dennis Kennedy, and you’ve been listening to the Kennedy-Mighell Report, a podcast on legal technology with an internet focus. If you like what you heard today, please share the podcast with your networks and on social media and subscribe to the podcast. We’ll see you next time for another episode of the Kennedy Mile Report on the Legal Talk Network.

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Outro: Thanks for listening to The Kennedy-Mighell Report. Check out Dennis’ and Tom’s book, ‘The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together’ from ABA Books or Amazon. And Join us every other week for another edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report only on the Legal Talk Network.

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