Beyond the Paper Trail: Alistair Maiden's Quest for Contract Efficiency

Made with speech-to-text software, so a few words may be off.

0:00You're listening to the Contract Heroes podcast, your one-stop shop for all things contract management. And now here are your hosts, Marc and Pepe. Well, Alistair, thanks so much for being here. Uh, it was great to see you, you know, a couple months back in person, but, uh, I hope you're, you're staying busy. But we really appreciate you, you know, just jumping on here with us and having this conversation. Uh, so I, I think maybe to kick things off, uh, why don't you give us a little background maybe on Syke to begin, and then from there we can, we can kind of dive into how you, uh, started the organization. Yeah. Thanks, Marc. It's great to be here, um, and Pepe also. Um, so Syke, we're, um, legal tech, contract tech specialists. We've got about 200 people operating globally, implementing most of the big CLM products out there that you've probably heard of, but also what we would call legal operations technology as well, so matter management, dabbling in some of the newer AI products, spend management as well. And then we have a consulting arm which looks at, um, helping corporate legal departments to achieve, uh, I guess digital but also analog best practice. We've been running for about six and a half years.

1:19I set the business up myself in 2016. Uh, my background was I was a corporate lawyer for Asda, which was until quite recently part of the Walmart Group, so it's the, the UK name for Walmart. And I was in charge of all contracting there and I guess legal operations before, before it was called legal operations. In probably about 2012, I got really interested in, uh, the idea of CLM or digital contracting, as we called it back then. By piecing together two or three, I guess, um, legacy piece- well, now legacy pieces of technology, we created a, an end-to-end contracting solution focusing on allowing colleagues to self-service their contracting needs. And it was really a solution born of desperation. I just like I had a couple of young kids at the time. I, I've still got them, but they're less young now.

2:20And I was getting into the office for 6:30 every day and not leaving until 8:00, 9:00. And the reason for that was just the sheer volume of contracts that I was having to deal with. And I always tell people that when I was at Asda, I always used to have to take the service entrance, 'cause if I took the main entrance, it could take me up to an hour to get to my desk, um, because everyone would come and besiege me for updates on their contract, which often it was quite embarrassing for me 'cause I'd probably not even read their email at the time. So, um, we needed to, we needed a solution to start contracting a lot quicker, and we did that by doing the basics very well, so allowing people to self-serve the creation of their NDAs, their MSAs, their SOWs. And really, you know, the objective was to produce something that was as easy to use as an iPhone, uh, so we didn't have to train them, but also something that had as fewer touch points with legal as possible. So we, we introduced some really interesting concept of guardrails. So basically within certain guardrails, uh, colleagues could freely contract without having to even speak to us.

3:36And it was only, um, when they wanted to do certain risky activities, it would automatically be alerted to us. So that worked really well. We managed to reduce the average contract cycle time down from over 50 days to, um, five and a half days, and it was really impactful. Had a big commercial benefit. And I kind of just fell in love with it really. I just, you know, and I set the business up with a passion rather than a plan. So I was definitely more lawyer than business guy. And really we've just gone from there. So when I first started, it was just me, and as I said, six and a half years later, we're up to 200 people, and it's been a whirlwind really. Yeah. That's awesome. A long time though. That's awesome, Alistair. And well, that was actually one, my first question, like how was those first steps? But let's dig a little bit deeper on that, Alistair. Like, I know you were part of the, of those pain points, right?

4:36That you were, you know, attacked by everybody just like a couple of hours just to tell them the status of, of all of their contracts. But did you find any other like, inspiration, like maybe with somebody or any other company when, when you started and when you thought, "Okay, there's an, an opportunity to, to build a business around all those pain points"? Because it's not only on the organization you were working on, that's like that, that, that happens almost everywhere. Yeah. That's a really good question. I mean, so I guess my background, so before I was in the, my final role where I started to do this work, I'd actually started, um, my career as a, a tech lawyer, and so I'd always worked with other teams in the business as they were buying technology. And I was moved by just how much technology, the logistics function, the marketing function, obviously the IT function, had at their disposal and the extent to which that they were, I guess, digitizing.

5:40Way back in 2012, they were already largely digitized I would say. You know, particularly in interesting areas such as logistics, where they were, uh, using geofencing and tracking apps and optimization apps and it was quite an interesting area. It piqued my interest. And then I was thinking back to the legal department when we had basically nothing. We had- Word, Outlook, and iManage That's it Um, and iManage was due to some ridiculous IT security rules. It was an on-premises version, so it never worked. You know, someone would periodically unplug the server and, you know, like, you get the picture. Um, so I just thought, there's just a, a massive opportunity here to, to get on board with this. And I get... It, it wasn't, um, I didn't have kind of... I didn't have a eureka moment. I, I guess it was just, "Okay, well, if we were to do this." And then I, um, there's a lady called Katherine Bamford. You guys may or may not have met her.

6:45She is kind of the, in the UK anyway, she's the document automation queen really. She was doing it, you know, very early and working very closely with Contract Express in the early days, which is the product I used. She was working at Pinsent Masons law firm at the time, and she, I think someone introduced us. She showed me how Pinsent Masons were using technology to automate their employment contracts. Um, sorry, the employment contracts that they were producing for Asda. And I saw just the power of how, you know, for a few simple questions you can put together a robust contract. And I guess at that moment, my desire to digitize met with, okay, well, this is something that we can... You know, this is technology that's reached a level of sophistication that it can actually help, and we can do this. I guess it just went from there, really. I mean, the business actually is, has always iterated, uh, rather than it's, it not being super planned. Like, we have sensible, even now that it's quite big, I guess it's a proper company now, I always tell people, we have targets that we try and hit, largely based on, you know, we've got 200 people, we've got a lot of mouths to feed.

8:02We wanna grow, we wanna do well. But little direction under that target. We, we like to trust our people to, to get on with it, fail quickly and, you know, get to the right solution. I, I'm sure you guys go through the same thing really with, with your business. It's, it's fun. It's fun. This is an agile way of working. Right. And what about... Well, I totally agree with you that any other commercial department, they have their own software, especially like, you know, procurement with, I don't say procurement management, like Coupa or Ariba, you know- Yeah... ERP systems. Like, everything, it's all standard, and you cannot take the next steps until you fill the past requirements, right? That's pretty much, like, how a process works, right? You gotta go through all those steps. But one of the big challenges, especially when you work with the legal department, is that they don't have the same amount of budget for buying- Yeah...

9:03like, an ERP system or SAP or Oracle that are, like, super expensive. So now that you're on the consulting side, like, any other initial challenges on how to help them create that business plan, especially with back then when, and you said it, legal ops wasn't a word, right? So how can you convince them? Be- because that was, like, an evangelic challenge, like, to make them understand those pain points and that there, there is a solution. If we think back to 2016 when I started the business, it was, it was quite challenging really, because a lot of people hadn't even really heard of CLM, particularly in the UK where, and, and Europe, where I started off. If they had, if they were aware of it, it was usually in the context of an Apttus implementation back then. It's fair to say that didn't really, as a product, have a great reputation back then. There's nothing wrong with the product, but I think the implementations have been quite poor generally.

10:05I was fighting an uphill battle, and a lot of people that I went to speak to in the early days trying to essentially say, "Look, you know, this is what you could achieve if you digitize your contracting process." For every one who got on board with that and engaged us to help them, there were nine who would be like, "What are you talking about? Um, we don't have time or money or inclination for this." Now, fast-forward six and a half years, I would say it's a lot easier because CLM is a, an established thing. I think to a large degree on the back of all of the private equity money that's gone into the big CLM players, and that they've spent that money on raising awareness and, and driving business case and, you know. I would say most companies, you're pushing at an open door now. That said, there is still a problem, I think, when legal tries to raise the budget for a CLM implementation.

11:03And it's interesting, 'cause if you look at one of the consistent reasons that CLM projects fail is because there is an insufficient amount of budget allocated for, uh, the initial implementation, and even beyond that, the maintenance and growth of the system to meet the opportunity. So you often see these business cases which project times X return on investment. Like, realistically, you're not gonna get that unless you spend a good deal of cash on implementing the product correctly. And then you can see the benefits. We've got one customer who used the system that we implemented for them to digitize and automate over a million contracts last year, and the return on investment is, is times thousands, I think, for them. And, and there's other public examples, like Uni- Unilever's a good example. We, we've done a lot of work for them. Again- They've automated thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of contracts.

12:12And so it's quite easy to put your finger on. But, you know, the consistent element with both of these organizations is that they invest in, in the implementation. They take it seriously. They recognize that it's a multi-year project, not a wham-bam, three months, you're out. It's so... I think it's really sad, to be honest, if you see... When you see customers who've gone out and bought a premium product like iServices, okay? They spent a lot of money on the license fees, and they're using it for, like, NDAs and as a repository, and it's just such a shame to see that, and it kind of almost tarnishes the market, I think. You know, we're in this... You know, we're beyond the hype phase. We're beyond the hype cycle now. What's really deeply disappointing is you go and speak to a lot of customers for the first time, and you... The context has changed because you're actually speaking to them in the context that we've got this, but it failed. And what's really interesting is nearly always they blame the product. It's the product's fault.

13:15It doesn't work. It's not the product's fault. It's their fault. It's their fault because they didn't take it seriously. They didn't en- engage people with the right skill set. Say, like, clearly, if you're gonna do a CLM implementation, it's helpful to engage someone who's done one before or hopefully 10 or 20 or 100. But because then, you know, you don't have to make the mistakes that tarnish these quite complicated projects, and I think this is something that has been perpetuated by the vendors as well. There is a danger of underestimating the implementation effort. So even now, you know, I watch... If I go to Clock where we met, I, again, speak to the vendors, and quite often I'll do that, um, in a kind of off the record. I just wanna go and see how they're selling the product. It's interesting. And, you know, you, you still get that, "Oh, it's easy. You'll be up and running in three months." It's total BS. I mean, really? I've never- That's true... ever known anyone up and running in three months.

14:21I've never heard of it. I don't think it can... It's not possible. Maybe, like, you can get a couple of documents up and running in three months, but- Maybe an MVP, right? Like something like- Yeah, yeah... very simple. That one area. Which makes sense. Demonstrate the value. That's possible. Yeah, and I think one of the, one of the main pitfalls that we've seen for technology implementation, I don't know if the, if, if this was part of the World CC article, this is one of the old ones, the nine pitfalls or five. I can't remember how many pitfalls there are. Yeah. But one of those especially is that when they only focus on the product, on the vendor. And we've seen right now on the market, especially with there's a recession and people are, like, cutting their budgets a lot, the, there are some companies that are going, like, very aggressive. Like, "We don't charge for implementation. You only pay for licensing." It's like, man, this is not, th- this is not a plug-and-play software.

15:17Like, you need to have somebody with experience that can tell you what do you need, how do you see your processes. Because otherwise, it's just like, I don't know, go on Google because you have, like, Atomic and, uh, and you wanna get your own pills, and it, it doesn't work. You need somebody that is, like, independent that, that, that can help you and show you the way b- with their experience on how you can do a successful implementation because it's not just a standard process that works for everybody. You, you gotta learn what they're doing, right? To measure it and to know how to make it more effective. The idea that a company could not charge for implementation, I mean, first of all, I'd be really interested to see that company's valuation because, you know, there's some interesting revenue recognition rules being broken there. But, but also it's a joke. You know, I have actually seen a couple of these companies before.

16:10You know, I've been advising customers more from a consultancy perspective, and the level of service you get in that scenario is really poor. And, you know, it's a, it's a zero-sum game, isn't it? 'Cause they need to, to spend as little time as possible on your implementation, which is, it's gonna be counterproductive. CLM implementation should be reasonably complex, so... Because I think at least 50% of the implementation is going to be identifying, okay, well, what are your objectives? What does good look like? Is it speed? Is it being able to manage your contracts? What do you need to report on? What's genuinely helpful? Where is the return on investment? And even that requires some work at the outset. Then you've gotta look at the analog contracting process, and by that, I mean I ca- I talk about it as the content. So the documents, the rules relating to the use of the documents. So when are they used?

17:14The approval rules, the negotiation rules, the building rules. You know, most organizations, when they give us their documents, they're in quite an embarrassing state, frankly, and they need, they need work to be optimized. Um, it's quite interesting 'cause a, a lot of the organizations, they invest in keeping those templates up to date or optimizing them. They've usually been iteratively changed over a period of time. So, um, they actually often don't make much sense. But the interesting thing is that when you put them under the, under the scrutiny of automating them, and so you digitize them, you automate them, you make them available to users, only then do they seem to pick up on all the errors and mistakes and quirkiness. As an implementation guys, we often get blamed for that when actually it's problems with poor content. And you'll have, like, 17 NDAs where you could probably have one.

18:09You know, you'll have five versions of the MSA when you could probably have modular optional extras. Loads of opportunities there. Getting onto approval, you know, most organizations have really overly bureaucratic approval processes, and I would urge them to move to more like the guard rail system, say approval by exception, as I described earlier. And then negotiation. I love automating digital playbooks and thinking about fallback clauses right through to management reporting retrieval, you know, surfacing the data in contracts, making it available. Importantly, like something that is massively underestimated and most people don't do, and I don't really know why, is getting all of the contracts, all of the existing live contracts onto the system so that it becomes the single source of truth. That's massively neglected by customers and organizations. And I think the true value is in having that repository that is accurate and is up to date, um, by design and by default.

19:16Um, so what I mean by that is even if you're producing contract- contracts out with the system, say maybe you've got 50% of your templates automated by the system and 50% are like bespoke or third party paper or whatever. That the moment those X system contracts are signed, that they're automatically, um, stored in the right place on the system so that all of the contracts are in the same place. Remarkably, most people don't do that. It's obviously intrinsic to the value of having a contract, a contract lifecycle management product. So you can probably tell I can talk about You know, I think we see many of the same things, right? And especially when it comes to that legacy information. And it, and it is important to get that information in there because really that's, that, I mean, that's where you're gonna see trends and you're gonna be able to pull reports and, and get an understanding on what's really going on with, with the health of the business is, is in that information.

20:13You know, I think for the, what, three, four, four years that we've really been focused on, on the CLM space, you know, I think we've seen the maturity of our, uh, the folks that we work with also, um, has, has grown. But I do still think that there is kind of a mentality out there in a lot of these organizations that unfortunately they think they can do a lot of this more so themselves, right? They, they think the implementation could be done quicker. Uh, and there is, you know, there is lighter tools out there that, that definitely can get you up and running, um, sooner than later. But, you know, in, in six, six months to a year, you're probably gonna already outgrow what the, the functionality is in those types of applications. Are you still seeing there, you know, you really need to drag those customers along for the ride for those first, you know, couple of weeks of, of the implementation to get them to really hand over the information that, that you're looking for and really probably give them an understanding of what, what this actually is going to take to, to get up and, and running with the CLM tool? I think one of our strengths is we're really upfront and transparent with customers about what it takes to make this successful. And I, I'm quite proud that we, we do actually turn down work.

21:16So if the customer isn't willing to engage with us on what, what's required to be successful, like we don't want to be associated with failed products, uh, uh, projects and products. That's probably the worst thing that could happen to us. So I do think that's really helped. It becomes difficult, as Pepe mentioned, there's a recession at the moment. The market's difficult, you know, it's not quite as easy as it was 18 months ago. I'm not saying it's difficult, we're still doing well, but you know, the work was flooding in faster than we could, we could do it and we could pick it up. So it is more challenging to turn work away. But I do think it's really important that, you know, this is a small world, isn't it? You probably, you know, if someone was to drop a bomb on Clock, it would be seriously disruptive to the industry wouldn't it? Because everyone, you know, every- pretty much everyone gathers together in, in one place and the industry is so small. So people talk, people know each other. Reputation's hugely important.

22:15You know, I love the fact that we can walk around Clock and people come up and say, you know, who I don't know and say, "Thank you," you know, "for the work you guys have done." And just getting back to your point, Marc, I think customers really appreciate that transparency. There are some that ignore it, but I think industry awareness is improving. Right. And we can see it. And one of the things that, that we loved about Clock, it was my first time that I, that I, that I went to Clock. It's just like how, how many people you can just meet there, right? And, and learn from their experiences. Uh, we had the chance to talk, uh, with one of your customers, with James Donald, the general counsel from, from ACOR. And he got some setbacks from a previous CLM implementation and now that's like completely different, right? Because that's like one of the importance of having a good consulting firm to help you because they cannot understand you.

23:09It's not like just treating that directly with the vendor that they can tell you that it's, everything is gonna be fine and just make the project as big as possible. But no, you gotta start from something like try to prioritize because otherwise the, deciding which, which vendor takes a lot of time. The implementation process takes a lot of time, but the adoption and the training, that's another whole story. And if you don't have like a process on how to create a solution, especially for a company with that size, right? It's not gonna be successful. And like you said, everybody knows everybody now, especially if you go to Clock, if you go to the World CC events, and if something doesn't go as, as planned, a lot of people is gonna know. So you gotta be very, very careful with that. Yeah. I freak out about that kind of stuff. I was smiling when you mentioned James 'cause I was actually arranging a, a golf match against him.

24:11Uh, he's, he's visiting the UK, so I'm, I'm one nil up. I, I'm gonna use this public forum and say I'm one nil up in golf with James, so he's come over to the UK for some revenge this summer Um, and we probably won't be talking about CLM implementations while, while we're on the course. We'll be concentrating. That's great. No, I, I want to, uh, I definitely n- need to start bringing my clubs when we go to clock next year, so- Yeah... um. Oh yeah, you need to, you need to. I think we're, we're looking to have a tournament next year, so. Good. Good. Well, that's exciting. That's exciting. You know, being that you have been in the space for a while, you've been on both sides of, of, of these implementations working with these products, what do you think the future holds? What, what does the next 12 to 18 months hold for the, the CLM space? Any, any big changes coming? Any, any predictions, anything like that? Yeah, I think there are gonna be some changes actually. I think we talked a little bit earlier about reputation, and I think reputation's gonna become quite an important factor.

25:10I think there's a load of really disgruntled customers out there now, and I'm not sure that they're quite talking to each other yet. I think, you know, the market will bring them together, and I'm fascinated to see how that plays out. And, you know, I think there is a big difference between some of the companies, both in terms of differences between the product, but probably more importantly, the customer service orientation within these companies. And, you know, reputationally, I think that's important. Um, I think it's important in terms of the success of projects. I think we're gonna see some really interesting stuff around, you know, are the first or second generation of companies that bought CLM, are they gonna renew or are they gonna move? Uh, 'cause there are a hell of a lot of, um, big companies who are up for renewal in the next 18 months or so. Fascinating to see what happens there.

26:10And then correspondingly, a lot of these companies are highly PE venture capital, even debt-fueled in some cases. And so I'm really interested to see how those two things might work together and, and is it the case that all of those companies will be around in 18 months? I'm not sure. Um, I th- I think definitely at least two of them are ripe for being acquired by some of those enterprise products that we talk about, uh, and enterprise companies that we talked about before, and that will be a really big change in the market. I'm fascinated by, I think the move that we've made towards having this kind of separate digital contracting design consulting arm within the organization and recognizing that that's at least 50% of the work. I think that's just gonna become normal and, you know, it's so important, and we're seeing how that part of our business is growing faster than any other and leading to really great outcomes for customers.

27:16And I, I also see that happening in the market as experts like you guys also are, are becoming more prominent. I know you've had my colleague, Trace Marcell, on previously. She's, she's like a knockout expert in this subject area. And, you know, just seeing the work that she does with customers, for example, is, it's so valuable. And there are others, you know, not working for my organization that have written books on the subject and, you know, I, I think it's, it, it's really fascinating. And then finally, I think Gen AI and LLMs, like we've got to talk, we can't have a podcast without talking about that. But I'm, I'm fascinated to see they are used as part of an implementation project. And we're, you know, we're exploring at the moment, um, using prompt engineering to do some of the configuration coding for us. And, um, ostensibly it's a threat, but I think it's just gonna...

28:15I don't think the market go, will go away. I just think it will lead to better outcomes for customers, quicker, faster implementations. But probably, um, lar- with larger scale. So I mentioned earlier about, you know, NDAs and repository only or MVP only, and we never get past that phase. I think that will probably make it, uh, more affordable to actually implement a CLM system for, for most of the organizations. Right. There's a lot of things that is going on. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, Tracy Marcell episode is coming next Monday. Right now we are in July 24th, so it's coming in the 1st August. Yeah, 1st August, I think. Right. Right. It's gonna be good. Yeah. We are, we also had, uh, Lewis Brett from last year at, uh, the World CC, so we already got three from your team. Yeah. You're, you're the third one, Alistair. You were the missing part. Right. You're, like, very active on social media, es- especially on, on LinkedIn. And I think that, like you said, this is something that can go for another podcast, but let's just focus on contracts on this time.

29:22Like, since Thomson Reuters made this, I don't know if it was a joint venture or, or, or some kind of contract or whatever with OpenAI, I was just, like, mind-blown. It's like, can you imagine Westlaw with ChatGPT? That's gonna be, like, crazy. Like, all the time that you need to, to do any kind of research is gonna go just, like, for seconds. And then they, they acquire CaseText for a little bit more than a half billion dollars. Like, how are you envisioning that? Like, I, I've seen that on your, on your post on, uh, LinkedIn, you're, like, very active and, and very excited about AI. We actually had a conversation a couple months back with Zach Abramowitz about the AI on CLM, but I would like to have your perspective. Like, how do you envision in the next 12 months? Because right now it's just, like, it, it's going like rocket. Like, everything, every, every week there's something new. There's- Yeah, I know... Elon Musk is gonna go. He's on AI, you know.

30:23Like, everybody is going with AI. But in your experience or with, uh, or with, with your customers, like, how do you think people should approach on these new tools? I think the first thing, first piece of advice I would give, so first of all, I would echo your comment. It, it moving super fast, and I, I am incredibly excited about what's, what we're going to be able to achieve in, in short order through this new technology. I think it's probably the single most transformative thing to happen, not just to the contracts industry, but the, the wider legal industry in some time. And I think, uh, you know, and I guess my first advice to listeners would be don't go out there and buy some startup product, um, thinking it's gonna be a panacea to all of your legal problems. I think you're gonna see a massive amount of market consolidation. You've already seen that with Thomson Reuters acquisition that you just mentioned, but also the core products.

31:25I mean, Ironclad have already got some outstanding capability out there. Um, DocuSign, it, it's definitely coming. I've, I've seen what they're planning to build. I, I'm less familiar with the other vendors, but no doubt they'll have their own roadmaps as well. And one of the things that we're doing at the moment is while we're waiting for all that, and also critically we're waiting for Microsoft's Copilot tool, which is what was, um, demonstrated working in tandem with the Reuters, Thomson Reuters, um, data sources like Westlaw and Practical Law you mentioned earlier. While we're waiting for all of that to become available, Syke have been... We're a, a, a gold partner with Microsoft, so we get certain advantages, and we've been experimenting with doing some of this stuff in our own environment, and it's fascinating about what we've been able to achieve. I'll narrow it, 'cause otherwise I'll end up talking all day just on this subject, but just looking at a contracting perspective, being able to quickly review a contract versus a playbook, which we've taught the AI on, and to pick out how the contract contravenes the playbook.

32:41Fascinating. And then beyond that, to actually suggest alternate clauses to, to, to suggest an amended red line version of that document. And the fact that we can do this already with limited budget in a couple of weeks is, quite frankly, frightening. And so, you know, I think that's something that hitherto the CLM companies have never really cracked, that automated negot- review and negotiation. So I think it's really fascinating. And, and then also, you know, get- getting to the point earlier about getting all of your contracts in one place. So what we've done is put all the site contracts in one place, and we're asking the AI questions about that, those contracts. So tell us on a pr- a basic level, tell us all of our, all of our contracts with Acme Corp. and then tell us all of our contracts that are expiring next week.

33:39And, and, you know, the facility to ra- rather than having to kind of pre-program this as a report field within your CLM database, to just be able to intuitively, um, interact with the AI and get to the right answer very fast. So exciting. I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's gonna be fantastic. Just taking a right turn for a moment. I think in terms of disruption, like to me, this is just gonna enhance the CLM market, the digital contracting market. I only see opportunity for my business in this development. Where I do think that, uh, gen AI might impact on organizations is advisory legal services. And I'm just picking up on your point about, you know, how crazy it is to think of Westlaw and AI working together. But, you know, it's really interesting that, you know, whereas previously you'd have had to probably phone a lawyer to say, "Tell me about the, um, diversity employment regulations in South Africa," for example, and, and then to have a conversation about that.

34:51And, you know, from my own experience, like our, our South African lawyers are very good, but it's often a bit of a stilted experience, that process, 'cause you then have to get an engagement letter and you have to, you know, maybe they misunderstand the context, blah, blah, blah. You know, to have AI trained on your own risk parameters, trained on how you ask questions, and then with access to relevant legal materials and being able to produce, anyone's gonna be relying on this for something which is ultra high risk. And, you know, frankly, you'd want to go to a lawyer for an insurance premium. But to get to the answer on something on near, you know, fairly reliably 80% right on something really fast, I think that's gonna be very disruptive to legal advisory services. I really do. I don't think it'll be long before the answer's as good as the lawyers or better. I'd say it is gonna be hugely disruptive.

35:51I know the legal market in the US particularly is huge, so I think it's very exciting. Yeah. You know, that's, that's interesting. It's definitely a different, uh, a different perspective, uh, you know, a different functionality there than, than how we usually talk about AI on the show, because it's so focused on, on the CLM portion. Which I do think is, that's coming a long way, right? Like, as we said, a lot of these publishers are, are, are all coming out with their own forms of AI. And I, I think, you know, it's going to help a ton, like you said, with the legacy, uh, data migration and extraction. Um, I think right, you know, as of right now, and I think at least for the 12 to 18 months, we're probably still gonna need some manual review, uh, when we're, we're talking about legacy information. But, uh, obviously just having that, that functionality helps a ton to get things done, uh, faster and, and at a higher volume. But Alistair, this is, this has been fantastic. We really appreciate you, uh, you coming on and, and having a conversation with us.

36:42If folks wanna learn more about Syke, best place to do that, the website, anywhere else that, uh, that you'd recommend, uh, connecting with you on? Yeah, website or just drop, you know, feel free to drop me a line. I'm fairly, I'm fairly open on LinkedIn, so love... I actually, Pepe was saying I'm quite active on LinkedIn, and it's amazing some of the conversations that it gets you into. And, you know, I love the, um, I love the fact that you... One of the best things about LinkedIn has got, got to be the facility to just ask l- ask your LinkedIn community a question, and I, I love the responses. So anyone can engage with me through that medium. Well, fantastic. Well, hey, thanks for, thanks for joining us again, and thanks everybody for listening to another episode of Contract Heroes. Thank you, guys. Of course. Thank you. This episode of the Contract Heroes is sponsored by Koho Consulting. Koho helps organizations of all shapes and sizes find, implement, and manage their chosen CLM tool.

37:41Whether your project is buy or sell side led, Koho can help you navigate the waters of the CLM space to make sure that you're getting a product that's going to fit like a glove for years to come. If you'd like to learn more about Koho, visit their website at C-O-H-O consulting dot com.