How the law company is changing the legal industry

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

0:00Welcome to another episode of Contract Heroes, the show where our guests, and sometimes us, provide best practice recommendations on all things related to contract management. Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Contract Heroes, where we're not the heroes, our guests are. Uh, today on the show, we've got a good one for you. We've got John Croft. He's the president and co-founder over at Elevate. Um, before we dive in and Pepe gives you a little bit of background on what we're gonna be discussing today, I just wanna flip things over to John so he can give us a, a little bit more information on his, his background and, uh, you know, how he ended up at, uh, creating Elevate. So John, thanks for joining us, would, uh, love to, to kick things off by just getting some more information, uh, around your, your background. Thank you very much. Nice to be here. Thank you for asking me.

1:01Um, I don't know how much information you want about my background, but, um, I, I started off, um... I guess I would start off by saying I'm not a, I am not a lawyer. Um, and I only say that because, uh, lots of people in our space, um, are lawyers. Um, but when I was growing up- Of course... um, I just, I thought I wanted to be a business person, and I didn't really know what that meant other than you kind of put on a s- suit and a tie and had a briefcase. Um, but that's what, that's what I wanted to do. Um, I, I grew up, um, in Oxford, uh, where there's obviously a very famous university, so lots of the people I knew when I was growing up were, like, super, super academic. Um, and I'm not particularly academic. Um, and so I s- I thought I didn't wanna be an academic, um, and, or to go to law school or medical school or anything like that. I just wanted to be a business person.

1:59Um, and the, I guess the funny thing is I've ended up working for my entire career, uh, with lawyers, uh, many of whom went to Oxford or Cambridge or Harvard or any other good universities, and there's nothing wrong with that. Um- ... but, um, that's why I started off by saying that I'm, I, I'm not a lawyer. Um, and yeah, I think that, how did I end up at Elevate? Um, I ended up here because, um, in, from my very first job in my very early 20s, um, as I say, I was selling things to lawyers to help them do their job more efficiently. And if you want the very short version of th- nearly 35 years of doing this, um, uh, all I've done since then is keep exactly the same customer base. So I've been selling things to the same lawyers, but what is, um, what has changed over that period of time, um, is that, um, what I've been able to sell them and how I've been able to help them, um, has, has changed sort of reasonably dramatically.

3:09Yeah, that's, that's a good point because I was actually going to ask you to dive a little bit, uh, deeper on that because, like, I know you don't like the term non-lawyer but what were, like, the pain points you were seeing in the industry? Like, why you start focusing, like, working with lawyers? What was out there that, that, that you thought this had to change? Yeah. Um, there's two very good questions in what you just said. The first one is, uh, and they're sort of different. So the first one is, uh, why do I not like the term non-lawyer? Um, and I, I'll just quickly hit that on the head because there's nothing wrong with being a lawyer. That's, you know, some of my best friends are lawyers. Me too. But, um, what I f- what I find, um, difficult/unacceptable about the phra- phrase non-lawyer is, um, it is, uh, it is divisive. Uh, it implies that there are the lawyers who are these people behind the velvet rope, and then there's everyone else. It is exclusive.

4:15Um, and when people say to my face, "Oh, you're a non-lawyer," um, I, I, it just, it really ri- it rubs me up the wrong way. And I would say, if you go into hospital, um, uh, somebody in a white coat doesn't walk up to me and say, "Oh, you're a non-doctor." You know, I'm, I'm still a human being. Um, I can still, I c- I can still think. Um, and I know that I'm not a lawyer, um, but actually being called a non-lawyer implies that, a- as I say, that there's this sort of velvet rope. And, uh, one of the many things that, um, we are trying to do differently at Elevate, um, is to crack the, um, the lack of diversity in the legal sector, um, and that whole kind of equitability and inclusion side of, uh, of things. Um, and whilst it is, it's not gender related or race related or sort of socioeconomic related, that idea of lawyers and non-lawyers is just a divide that we don't think is necessary. Right.

5:20Both, uh, people on both sides of that divide are needed. Um, and I, I guess I'll come on to talk about that later. It's, it's important. In fact, it is vital in some instances to have a lawyer, but I would also say it is important and even vital to have people who are not lawyers doing some of the work as well. Um, so it, we, we try to be inclusive, um, uh, equitable, um, uh, rather than sort of divisive and have the kind of haves and the have-nots, or the doctors and the nurses or, you know, however you want to, uh, re- refer to it. Great. So, um- Good... yeah, so that was that. Sorry, I, it's just a little, um, a little hobby horse of mine, that particular one, as you rightly say. Um, but then, um- I think your second question was what did w- what did we see in the sector that kind of, what were the pain points, um, that caused us to start Elevate? Um, and I think what we saw was a, a legal sector that, and, and I'm talking obviously about the corporate legal sector, so I'm not talking about personal, you know, d- divorce or wills or anything like that. Right.

6:32This is just big, big corporate, cor- corporate legal that we're talking about. Um, and we saw a sector where for about 100 years there have been two ways of doing things. You'll either, if you're in-house as a, as a corporate in-house legal team, as a general counsel, say, you either hire a whole bunch of lawyers and write the contracts yourself or do the li- litigation or whatever it is that you're doing. Or you pick up the phone to a law firm, a traditional old school partnership. Um, and I'm in London, so in London they all happen to be based in, in one small square mile of the city of London, in a particular, uh, financial district. Um, they tend to be in, you know, large marble buildings with big, um, atrium, and, um, they tend to be filled with mainly guys in dark suits and s- ties and black shoes. You know, there was a kind of a, there was- Right... a way of doing things.

7:31Um, and in some instances, um, you know, when there is a very specific advisory piece of legal advice that's needed, then, uh, then that's absolutely the right place to go. But, um, those were the only two options for, as I say, for about 100 years. And what we saw really over the time that, uh, we were in our last business and really over the last kind of 15, 20 years or so, was that there were other people starting to come up with other ways of doing this legal work and getting on top of things like contracts, and that, um, some of them were consulting, legal consulting businesses. Some of them were flexible lawyering businesses. Uh, some were legal technology businesses. Uh, some were managed services. Some were legal process outsourcing. There were kinda lots of different, uh, people coming up with lots of different ways of tackling the same problem. And what we thought was that we would set up a company that did all of those things under one roof, and w- it didn't exist when we started. There was no, there was no o- one we could point to and say, "That's what we're gonna do."

8:49Um, in a way that if we, if we just started, if we just said we were gonna start a law firm, then, you know, I could phone up my mum, and my mum knows roughly what a law firm is, you know? E- everyone would kind of have a picture in their mind of what that, what that would do. Um, there was nobody that did this, and the closest that we could come, uh, when we looked around the world, um, was Accenture. Um- Okay... and our thinking was that if you were, um, the chief executive of a big global corporation, doesn't matter what you did, um, if you had a business problem you were trying to solve, you could phone up somebody like Accenture and they would come in and do probably three things. The first is they would bring some consultants in who would help you frame what your, what, what the question is, what the problem is that you're trying to solve, and they would then help you design a solution to do this, uh, more, more effectively. And sometimes that solution is redesigning y- you and the company, and then they send you a consulting bill and go off and leave you to do it more efficiently.

9:54Um, and sometimes they would say, "Well, we actually have helped, you know, 20 of your main competitors do this, and as a result of which we've built kind of a managed service and we can do this for you, and you can give it all to us and we'll sell it back to you." Um, so there was consulting, there was services, and then the third piece is technology, where, um, sometimes either some technology will do the work or it will support the work being done at the company or at, um, Accenture. So this was a business model, um, that we saw and thought, "That's great and that works," and Accenture's a very successful, uh, company. Um, but in the legal space, which is where we are, there is no Accenture. Right. Um, there is nobody that does all of that. So if you were a general counsel running a legal team, or if you were a managing partner running a law firm, y- you kind of couldn't phone Accenture 'cause they weren't in our space, and there was nobody that could do those things. So we thought, "Well, is there, uh, you know, is there a sort of infinite list of problems that you could need solving if you were in a leadership position in a legal business?" And the answer is no, there's not a limitless, uh, list.

11:07It's quite a long list, but it's not, it's not an infinite list. Um, and so our plan when we started was if we could build out a solution for all of these things, and they would fall into those same three categories, a consultant that would come in and help define what the problem is and design a solution. It might be you running your contracts more efficiently yourself, or it might be us saying, "Well, we've, we, we do all this contract work for all your competitors and we could do this for you and sell it back to you." Um, and thirdly, some technology which might either, you know, write the contracts or draft the contracts or store the contracts, um, or just support us or the end customer doing it, then we would have created an organization which in our very, very early days we called, um, Accenture for Law. Uh, 'cause we just didn't know what to call it, 'cause it, as I say, it didn't exist before. Um, and we actually put that on our website.

12:06Um, and then I think one day Accenture phoned us up and said, "Would you- Would you mind taking it down off your website because you have nothing to do with us at all? At which point, um, we, we had to sort of come up with a way of describing ourselves, and the phrase that we came up with was law company. And our thinking was that there are-- it's not a question of right or wrong, uh, but there are three, uh, now there are now three different ways of doing things instead of two different ways. There were always law departments and law firms. There are now law departments, law firms and law companies, and there is a place for all of them. So we are not here as a competitive threat to take work away. Um, what we bring to the market is efficiency. And whether you're a law firm or a law department, we can help you be more efficient, um, and structure yourselves to be more efficient and buy more efficiently from each other. Um, and, uh, that's probably a longer answer than you wanted, but that's, that's the kind of- No, no... that's the story of, um- No, no. How we got to be here today. Yeah, no.

13:11And, and that, you know, really answered my next question, which was gonna be, you know, what's the difference between, um, you know, the, the type of organization that you're talking about and, and the traditional, you know, methods, and we kind of really discussed that, right? So I mean, the difference is you're offering a, a multitude of services, right? I mean, we have consulting, we have managed services, we have technology. And you know, I, I think we touched on something earlier when you were answering that first question that Pepe had is, around, you know, collaboration between departments and lawyers and non-lawyers coming, coming together more so to, to, to work on things together, and I think that that's maybe not a newer trend, but I think it's being accepted by more and more organizations, uh, over the past couple of years. Is, and, and maybe that's just what, you know, we've seen because we're new to this space, right? Um, so I guess, I mean, John, my, my question is, you know, what, what, what-- in what ways do you think organizations out there that maybe still are kind of more segregated, I mean, h- what, what kind of tips can you give them so that their, their legal team is working more in, in sync and harmony with their other departments that are out there in these, in these large organizations?

14:18Yeah. It's a good question because I think if you look, if you look at, at the sort of C-suite of a big organization, um, it was twenty-five years ago that the CFO's door got knocked on and, and the CFO got told to sort their department out and to bring technology, um, in. Um, I, I sometimes remind my children that when I started work, um, the internet didn't exist, so there was no email. Uh, we used to write letters and stick a stamp on and send them to each other and then wait days to come back, and my children kind of look at me as if I was completely mad. And, um, but that's, that's how life was. Um, and when I started work, our finance department, and we were a publicly listed company on the London Stock Exchange, so it was a big proper company. The way that, um, we did all of our, our financials was rows of people sitting at desks, wooden desks with calculators, with little rows of paper on the back, and they would add numbers up, print them out, and then swap paper with the person sitting next to you, and you'd check the math on it.

15:27And that's how we did our annual reports and our filings with the stock exchange and all that kind of stuff. And there was nothing unusual about that at the time. If you were to walk into a company now and to their finance department and you saw people doing that, you'd think it was crazy. I mean, at the very, very least there's Excel, but at the more sophisticated corporate level, there'd be some SAP or, you know, some other Oracle type of, you know, some big enterprise financial system that does all their GAAP reporting and, and, and tracks everything. A- and what's interesting is that that is the-- it's not just the norm. I mean, you get audited to check you've got systems like that in place, and there'd be a problem if you didn't. So that's the finance department, and that's been going for twenty-five years. You walk along that C-suite corridor, and you tap on the door of the general counsel, and I would say ten years ago, you-- no one was even knocking on the door because it was always we're lawyers, it's special. Um, you know, you don't understand.

16:31We can't commit to a budget because we don't know what we're going to do, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm pleased to say that over the last ten years, um, the general counsel, um, has had to become as accountable to the CEO as the CFO has. Um, and yet, um, I'm not saying quite that you walk into the legal department and there are rows of people sitting at wooden desks with fountain pens. But I mean, it's- Mm-hmm... it's not far off. You know, the point is, if you talk about legal tech, it is still seen as a threat and something new and something odd instead of how it is in finance, which is, it's, it's what you have to have, otherwise you're in trouble and you're gonna put-- you know, you're gonna fail your audit. So, um, we're just in this little point, um, and it's been a few years. Um, companies like Elevate have been right in the eye of the hurricane for it all. Um, so we're pretty familiar, and it doesn't bother us at all. Um, most companies are coming along with it, but it is, it is still not, it's still not a given that you'll walk in and everything is automated. Far from it.

17:37Um, so I think your question mark about, you know, tips for organizations and what they can do better is, is, I-- first of all, I'd say just don't look at, don't look at ch- this type of change as a threat. Um, I think, you know, trying to hold on to the way we've always done things, um, is a very natural human, um, response to change. No, nobody-- humans generally don't like change. Um, but I think, again, and sort of go back to my children as, just as a proxy for an age group and- We haven't met. We, we've only met over screen, but I'm guessing your age group as well, 'cause from looking at you both. But, um, you know, the next, the next generation of lawyers coming through are, are digital natives. Mm-hmm. So they're not gonna walk in and say, "Ooh, this looks like a piece of threatening technology that's gonna take my job away." They're actually gonna say, "What do you mean there's no technology?

18:35I'm, I'm not gonna sit there and do that manually myself. That's not what I went to law school for, and that, you know, that's, that... I'm gonna go and work somewhere else." So I think, you know, there is that, um, th- there's that sort of generational, uh, point in time at the moment where we've got a mix of people in the legal workplace. Um, but that's, that's changing. That's changing pretty quickly. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, and I would, I would agree with that. You know, we're seeing a mix, mix of everything, right? I mean, there's some, some departments out there or, or some legal teams out there that are, uh, you know, early adopters and, and they're moving forward. And, um, and, you know, like you said, there's other, uh, organizations where, where people are scared of tech and they don't really understand that it's something that they can leverage so that they can focus on more important tasks. And, and it'll free up their time because the, the, the manual searching and the, um, repetitive tasks, the small things that they're doing, um, that take up a lot of their day is, is just stuff that they can put on autopilot. Yeah.

19:28Um, but I, but I think, I think, you know, and, uh, you know, it, as much as the pandemic was, was terrible, I think one good thing that came out of it was, you know, it really opened people's eyes to technology and, and why they need applications in place to help them work smarter or, or- Right... access documents from anywhere and things like that. So yeah, I, I think we're- Yeah... you know, we're, we're seeing stuff, very similar stuff over here and, and it's, um, it's an exciting time to, to be working with legal departments. Yeah. For sure. Right. And it, it's, it's just like thinking like an accountant can work without you, you using Excel. It just like it's not a threat. It's just a tool that really is gonna help you to use all that administrative work, uh, on autopilot, like, like Marc said. And so John, there's also, I mean, uh, I, I came also with a, with another question, uh, now that you were talking about this. And, uh, I mean, you know, there are certain services that by law, uh, such as client representation, only lawyers can perform due to this legal restriction.

20:30But however, can you tell us any other skill set that are looked by clients of the law company, uh, that are not necessarily need to be performed by a lawyer? Yeah. Yeah, there's lots. Um, uh, you know, and this comes back to the difference between a, you know, a law firm and a law company. Um, we've got lots of lawyers, so I just, I, I, I start, I started with that. We've got 1,300, um, I have 1,300 colleagues around the world and many, many, many, many of them are lawyers. So it's not that, it's not that lawyers can't or shouldn't do this work, quite the opposite. Um, but what we've set out to do is really tackle business of law problems rather than practice of law problems. So we are never gonna put ourselves forward as the organization that you go to to take, you know, to go to court or to, you know, to...

21:28There, there is, there are certain things as you, as you rightly say, that, that only, um, uh, uh, lawyers can do. But our, you know, that's a, that's a small part of it and if you're on a graph, it's the sort of top right in, in, in terms of kind of complexity and, um, and, and risk. But most of the work, most of the time in most of the companies that we're talking about are not up in that top right-hand corner. They're sort of, uh, they're not right down on the bottom left, but they're sort of in the middle there. And that is, you know, what we call, you know, it's running the business, not betting, not betting the business. Um, and for that type of work, um, yes, a legal brain is useful for some of the work. But, um, you know, the digitization of the world and the digitization of law departments and, and the legal sector, um, has led, as it has in all elements of society, to so much more data than there ever was, you know, before in the past.

22:35Um, that, uh, you, you know, you do need some technology sometimes just to be able to sort through the swathes of data, uh, to find the pieces that you need the lawyers to look at. Um, and so, um, data scientists that can work on that type of technology. Um, project managers who can, um, have the entirety of a project with the lawyers and the tech people and the data scientists and the, and the client and everyone else, um, is a vital part of kind of keeping a project on budget and on time. Um, so there are, um, all of those roles. There are then, um, kind of legal operations, which is a huge new, I can't call it a sector, but it's, it's, it's a, it's a job that just didn't exist 10 years ago. Right. Um, and, and legal ops is now a thing.

23:30Um, and it's respected and everyone understands in the same way as companies have chief operating officers, um, and teams have, you know, or, or divisions of companies have, you know, operations heads. In the past it was always just in, in legal there wasn't one. There was a, there was a general counsel and there were lots of lawyers, and everyone would just do their own thing because they were all very bright lawyers, but they'd all do it slightly differently. Nobody would do it wrong, but nobody would do it the same either. There was no process, um, and everyone would sort of do the work the way they wanted to do it. Um, and the idea now that, uh, legal operations is a, is not just respected but is absolutely vital, that you need to run your legal department the same way as the CFO runs the finance department, or the CMO runs the marketing department, and the CIO runs the tech, uh, side of the business. Um, it's, it is just as vital. So there's a, there's a wide range of, uh, skill sets that we look for.

24:30Um, and that's been- That's been hard at the beginning because we were battling against this, this whole lawyers, non-lawyers, um, thing we were talking about earlier. I'm pleased to say now, um, that's, that's, that's no longer, um, really a challenge, but it also helps with the, uh, the challenge around the lack of diversity, um, in the legal sector. And one of the reasons that, that, that we've been able to start moving the needle on that a little, um, is that it's, it's changed the conversation, um, around to look for outcomes. And what I mean by that is that in the past, if you needed, you know, a contract signing, um, you would either have, uh, someone in your team do it, or you'd phone up outside counsel. And if you phoned up outside counsel, you'd phone up one of the law firms that I described in the past, um, earlier, and, um, they would give it to somebody who was in the type of building I was talking about and looked and, you know, was probably a guy in a suit that would, that would, you know, to and fro on all of this thing.

25:47One of the, uh, changes that's happened to the market as a whole over the last 10 years, and then has been moved on in extreme in the last year with the whole pandemic and working from home, is people have had to just focus on the outcome, and the outcome is, "I need that contract by Friday." And if you can give me that contract finished and signed by Friday, then all of a sudden, I don't actually care where, which office you're sitting in. Um, and over the last year, nobody's been in an office. So the idea bef- before was that you had to go and sit in this office in the center of London at a desk in a suit and tie, and that's how you, that's how you did legal work. Now, all around the world, people have been sitting at their kitchen table with their kids on one side trying to do schoolwork and them trying to do the legal work. Right. And guess what?

26:40It all got, it, it got done. So now we know that. I'm not saying, I'm absolutely not saying never go back to an office or put a tie on again, but now, now we know that you can focus on the outcome, and if the outcome is, "I can get you the contract by Friday," then I sh- I no longer need to worry about, you know, w- where you are, who you are, and therefore, whether you are male or female or Black or white or gay or straight or, you know, all of the things that were difficult when everyone was in a building, and you walk down the corridor and literally everyone looked the same. Um, it has been, it has been, um, I think, help- very helpful the last, the challenges that we faced over the last year have been helpful in, um, taking away some of the prejudices around, um, the types of people that can do this work, which has been a good thing. Right. Of course. So John, and have you seen any kind of trend regarding technology, like which kind... I don't like to call it, like, legal tech.

27:40I would say, like, most of these kind of softwares are more like enterprise software, because at the end- Yeah... like, the legal department is not an in- independent entity. It works with the whole, with the whole enterprise. Yeah. But have you seen any, any trend on which kind of softwares have been, uh, adapted the most, uh, uh, in the market? Um, it's a good question. I, uh, and again, I, I agree with you. I sort of smile to myself when people talk about legal tech. Right. 'Cause no other, nowhere else has to stick legal in front of it. Everywhere else, it's just tech, you know? But of course, with lawyers, it has to be legal tech. It's, but you're right, it's just tech. Um- It's a buzzword. So, um, I think that the, I mean, the, the, the big trend is, uh, is obviously digitization- Mm-hmm... um, of, of legal, but of the, you know, the world at the moment. But, uh, legal has got sort of swept along in that. Um, and I, you know, I know we were sort of talking about contracts and, um, you know, contracts are a piece of legal work that, uh, has been done i- in exactly the same way as I've talked about f- for the last 15 minutes, which is, you know, by human beings, you know, with a pen sitting in a room and the door shut on their own, and then rows and rows of, of lawyers all doing it sort of manually.

29:01And, um, by digitizing, um, that process, um, you automatically are able to do other things like simplify, um, create templates, work to playbooks, um, take 50,000 contracts and interrogate them to see where there are certain common clauses, which no human being could possibly do. Um, so I think that the sort of, you know, the big trend is the digitization. Um, in terms of, uh, products, um, we see kind of a, a, a couple of things. There are, at the, at the s- bottom end of the market, there are some very sort of what we call point solution products, so a product that does a thing. And, um, there's been a lot of noise around those, and we all know who they are. And, you know, they're starting to kind of raise money and, and, and, and that's good, but they do a thing.

30:05Um, and there is nowhere yet, um, that is the, the platform, like a, you know, like a sort of a Facebook or something like that, you know? That, that, that level of platform. But, um, certainly, um, we see the trend moving towards more enterprise level systems. Um, and I don't mean a system that does absolutely everything, but something that you could, that a, an organization can put all of their contracts in, and then over time work. As I say, technology is not the answer to everything is the other, is the other important- Element to the trend, um, that it's not just tech, it's not just lawyers, um, it's a combination of all of these things and people working kind of in harmony together. Um, but we s- we see, um, a growing demand, uh, from the legal and the procurement sides of big corporations for, and some sort of enterprise legal management system.

31:09And, um, you know, different people within those departments will need different modules of it, um, and they're moving at a different pace. But, um, we, we think that there will be a small number of players that reach that level of kind of platform, um, in the market, and then there will always be the point solutions, um, that will come and go, and some will succeed and some won't. But there's, they, they will continue to do just, you know, one or two things. Uh, and that's fine, because if that's all you need, that's all you need to buy. Right. Um, but the, the, I think we- we're in that, uh, as I said, we're in that sort of point at the moment in the cycle where a lot of people have bought lots of point solutions thinking that they were all gonna be the answer, and all of a sudden their head's spinning 'cause none of them talk to each other, and none of them can actually put all of the data in. Um, and none of them are really f- fully utilized, and so they're thinking, "Well, hang on a sec, I, you know, I did everything manually. I, I thought I was doing the right thing.

32:11I bought all this technology, but actually now it's more complicated than it used to be. And so, you know, maybe I should just go back to doing it manually." And that's not, that's not the right answer either. Um, so, um, th- going back to my Accenture analogy, um, we spend a lot of time in our consulting business helping people make that decision, and speccing out and just making sure that the right piece of technology is bought and implemented. Um, because that's, um, sounds blindingly obvious, but that's, you know, that's ob- that's a very, very important, uh, decision to get right at the beginning, 'cause otherwise all of your other questions about utilization and change and, um, people coming along on the journey are not gonna happen if, if, you know, if you bought the w- wrong piece of technology up front. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, choosing a solution is only half the battle, right? I mean, you, you need to, to properly implement it, you need to get your user adoption up. You know, if those things don't happen, you could have the best piece of technology in the world, and, uh, it- it's just not gonna be utilized and you're just gonna waste a bunch of money.

33:12And, and I think that that's where the taking that consultatative approach really, really shines in, in truly having to understand what your customers are looking for and understanding what their needs and their problems are, um, is again, like you said, where, um, a point solution and more of an enterprise play definitely kind of separate because, you know, you need to take into account everything that's, that's going on inside of an organization if you're going to provide a, a solution to one or two of their problems. Uh, and if not- Yeah... they're just gonna outgrow it and have new problems in another year or two, you know? Um, so yeah. Yeah. No, John, we, we, uh, we appreciate your time and, and the insight. I think this, this has been a pleasure for all of us. Um, if, if more folks wanna learn about you or, or Elevate in general, I mean, where, where should they, uh, where should they find you? Um, I'm probably easiest to find on LinkedIn, uh, where you can find me, John Croft at Elevate.

34:04Um, we have a website, but, uh, very happy if anyone wants to get into touch direct, um, I'm easily accessible, um, and always happy to speak to people who are looking to, uh, deliver legal services more efficiently. Awesome. Thank you, John. It's great. This has been a, a great conversation. Uh, thanks everybody for listening to another episode of Contract Heroes, and we'll be back here next week or the week after, we'll see, uh, with, uh, a, a next episode.