At
last,
a
new
legal
tech
product
offering
that
doesn’t
mention
artificial
intelligence.
At
all.
Last
month,
8am
announced
its
expansion
of
its
popular
8am™
LawPay
into
what
it
calls
a
more
complete
financial
management
platform.
A
platform
that
just
works.
To
Do
or
Not
To
Do
AI
For
years,
the
world
has
been
divided
between
the
digital
and
analogue,
between
systems
built
on
discrete
binary
information
and
those
grounded
in
the
physical
world.
But
despite
all
the
talk
of
the
power
of
digital,
sometimes
analogue
still
drives
tools.
The
same
now
seems
true
of
GenAI:
the
world
seems
divided
between
things
powered
by
GenAI
and
things
that
aren’t.
And
the
things
that
aren’t
don’t
get
much
attention.
But
the
unheralded
things
that
aren’t
GenAI
can
still
be
critical
to
getting
what
lawyers
want
and
need
to
get
done.
All
the
GenAI
add-ons
in
the
world
aren’t
going
to
make
good
coffee
if
the
coffee
maker
isn’t
a
good
one.
The
same
thing
is
true
in
legal
tech:
there
are
some
tools
that
do
certain
jobs
better
without
being
trumpeted
as
a
GenAI
tool.
It’s
that
underlying
non-AI
tool
that
needs
to
work
well.
8am
What’s
this
have
to
do
with
8am
and
LawPay?
First
of
all,
8am
is
a
company
focused
on
the
business
end
of
law.
It
provides
billing,
accounting,
time
tracking,
and
collection-type
tools
that
get
to
a
key
need:
getting
paid.
Maybe
not
the
sexiest
part
of
legal
tech
but
certainly
one
of
the
most
important.
As
the
press
release
announcing
the
expansion
of
its
LawPay
tool
puts
it:
“8am
research
shows
that
fee
collection,
expense
collection,
and
expense
tracking
are
legal
professionals’
greatest
financial
and
operational
challenges.”
According
to
Leslie
Witt,
8am
Chief
Product
Officer,
“We
work
closely
with
firms
to
understand
how
they
actually
operate,
where
time
is
lost,
where
revenue
slips
through
cracks,
and
where
processes
break
down.”
Smart
Spend
One
of
the
key
and
most
interesting
components
of
this
unified
platform
is
something
called
8am™
Smart
Spend
for
LawPay,
about
which
I
have
written
before.
Smart
Spend
takes
the
pain
in
the
ass
process
of
turning
in
receipts
and
reports
for
reimbursement
into
an
automated
system
that
does
it
for
you.
You
use
the
credit
card
provided
by
8am
for
your
expenses
and
the
platform
automatically
records
and
links
the
expense
details
and
receipts
to
a
client
invoice.
Doesn’t
sound
all
that
cool,
right?
But
I
can
tell
you
from
experience
what
a
pain
it
is
to
try
to
turn
in
these
kinds
of
expenses
on
a
timely
basis.
You
rush
to
get
to
an
out-of-town
deposition,
choke
down
a
meal,
spend
the
night
in
some
forgotten
motel,
and
when
the
depo
ends
the
next
day,
rush
to
catch
a
plane.
When
you
get
back
to
the
office,
you
face
a
mountain
of
work
and
deadlines.
You
throw
the
receipts
in
a
pile
on
your
desk
and
then
sometime
later
get
around
to
turning
them
in,
often
losing
one
or
two
receipts
in
the
process.
It’s
a
pain
for
you
and
a
pain
for
the
firm.
8am
saw
the
problem
and
figured
out
a
solution.
That’s
what
good
legal
tech
vendors
ought
to
do.
And
not
being
content
with
just
eliminating
a
pain
point,
last
month
it
announced
a
major
enhancement
to
the
platform.
8am
says
this
enhancement
will
enable
such
things
as
centralized
billing
and
payments.
It
will
create
and
send
invoices,
receive
payments,
and
track
deposits
from
a
single
workspace.
It
will
also
enable
time
and
expense
tracking
that
captures
billable
hours
and
costs
as
they
occur
and
matter-specific
trust
accounting
that
allocates
and
monitors
client
trust
funds
across
matters
for
IOLTA
compliance. Finally
the
platform
will
now
allow
for
real-time
reporting
and
dashboards
to
view
cash
flow,
deposits,
and
trust
balances
instantly.
OK,
So
What?
The
remarkable
thing
about
the
announcement
and
the
press
release
were
two
words
that
did
not
appear:
Artificial
Intelligence.
That’s
right,
not
one
mention.
Not
one
sentence
heralding
the
exhaustive
implementation
of
AI
into
an
existing
and
good
platform.
Not
one
reference
to
AI
specialists
working
long
and
hard
to
develop
a
special
GenAI
platform
to
do
the
work
that
no
other
company
could
offer.
Instead,
the
refreshing
and
non-hyperbolic
press
release
does
what
8am
often
does:
introduce
a
product
by
talking
about
the
problem
it
solves,
a
problem
that
8am
perceptively
saw.
Like
Clearbrief,
which
came
up
with
a
non-GenAI
tool
to
check
case
citations
about
which
we
previously
wrote,
the
headline
is
not
what
Smart
Spend
does,
although
that’s
important,
it’s
that
8am
adopted
a
process
and
attacked
a
problem
in
a
practical
way
that
actually
helps
lawyers
and
legal
professionals.
It’s
the
old,
let’s
find
a
solution
to
a
problem
instead
of
finding
a
problem
for
an
AI
solution.
A
way
of
thinking
we
don’t
see
a
lot
of
these
days.
Witt
puts
it
this
way:
“There’s
a
lot
of
noise
and
excitement
around
the
[AI]
technology,
and
rightfully
so,
but
our
[customers]
trust
us
to
be
selective
and
intentional
about
where
–
and
how
–
it’s
applied
in
their
workflows…There’s
a
lot
of
noise
and
excitement
around
the
technology,
and
rightfully
so,
but
they
trust
us
to
be
selective
and
intentional
about
where
–
and
how
–
it’s
applied
in
their
workflows.”
I’ll
be
honest:
I
can’t
vouch
for
how
well
Smart
Spend
works
or
if
it
does
what
8am
says
it
will
(although
I
have
found
the
8am
folks
to
be
pretty
credible).
But
it
says
a
lot
these
days
and
times
when
a
company
markets
a
product
without
hyping
that
it’s
all
about
a
new
AI
application.
All
too
often
I
see
vendors
make
some
big
announcement
about
a
new
AI
tool
that
isn’t
all
that
new,
really
doesn’t
do
much
of
anything
different,
and
does
something
that
doesn’t
need
to
be
done.
8am
didn’t
do
that.
It
just
said
what
the
product
does.
And
here’s
why
it
helps
you
practice
law.
No
AI
hype.
No
AI
slop.
Just
good
old
thinking
about
a
problem
before
a
solution.
Stephen
Embry
is
a
lawyer,
speaker,
blogger,
and
writer.
He
publishes TechLaw
Crossroads,
a
blog
devoted
to
the
examination
of
the
tension
between
technology,
the
law,
and
the
practice
of
law.