Ep 247: Aderant CEO Chris Cartrett on the Company's Cloud-First Strategy and New Cloud Platform

Chris Cartrett
We're bringing a lot of innovation to bear the past kind of native in the application that our clients are just seeing value for, simply for being an adorant customer. That's what we want this to be. We want them to buy into adorant, understanding that like, hey, we're going to keep bringing the new technology solutions to you. You just hang on.

Bob Ambrogi
Today on Law next as this episode airs, Adorant, a technology company that provides business and practice management software for mid to large sized law firms worldwide, is in the midst of its global momentum user conference taking place in Nashville. At the conference, the company made a major news the launch of Striden, a new cloud platform that will form the foundation for all the cloud applications the company offers. That launch marks the culmination of a year in which Adorant has continued to push its cloud first strategy, most notably through its expert Sierra cloud based practice management system, and in which it is increasingly focused on the development of artificial intelligence tools to enhance law business management, including through Matti, the AI powered virtual associate it introduced last June. My guest today is the person leading the company through all of this, President and CEO Chris Cartrett. A ten year veteran of the company, he was named president in 2021 and took over as CEO on January 3, 2022. Now, just over two years into the job and just ahead of Adaren's conference this week, Cartrett sat down with me to discuss the news coming out this week and for a broader conversation about the company and the legal industry. This is Bob Ambrosi, and you're listening to law next, the podcast that features the innovators and entrepreneurs who are driving what's next in law. Before we get to that conversation, please take this moment to learn about the sponsorship whose generosity supports this podcast.

Mehra's case empowers workers compensation, employment and labor and insurance defense firms to run a successful law firm with innovative features built for your specialized practices from client intake and document management, time tracking and billing, online payment reconciliation, and more. Mirroscase has helped many other law firms reduce admin tasks and increase productivity. Run a more efficient and successful law firm with Mariscase. Get started today by visiting mariscase.com to learn more.

Before we get to today's episode, I have a favor to ask.

If you enjoy lawnext, please take a moment to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the show. Your reviews help others hear about us. Now onto my conversation with Chris Cartrett.

Chris, welcome to Lawnext.

Chris Cartrett
Hey Bob, thank you very much. Appreciate the opportunity to talk.

Chris Cartrett
I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me, and I know this is a busy time for you. And although we are recording this a little bit in advance, at the point that this is going out and getting published, you are going to be in the midst of Adorant's global momentum conference taking place in Nashville. And I know there's a lot of news and a lot to talk about coming out of that conference. But before we get to any of that, I just wanted to step back a little bit and kind of talk about where Adarent is today. You took over as CEO just over two years ago now, and you had been president for a period of time before that in order to kind of transition into the role of CEO as you succeeded Deanna Price, who was the former CEO there. And I talked to you at Ilticon just, just ahead of you becoming CEO. And you made the point then that you felt that the company was kind of entering a new phase at that point and that the transition was in some ways representative of that new phase. So I'm wondering, as you talk to customers this week at Momentum, what's your message to them about where and what Adaren is today?

Chris Cartrett
Yeah, so I appreciate the way you asked that question, too. We've been very fortunate, really, for the last nine to ten years to have a lot of success. We've grown all of our different product lines, which has been really good. But so much of that, Bob, was like at the time, because most of our customers are mainly large global law firms, it was still on prem software, doing things that they kind of always done. The software could kind of handle for them now. And so the real change, or I guess the real shift, if you ask that, that took place really after COVID, was whereas we all had SaaS products that we could deliver before, you had a little bit of a struggle for how they would take them post COVID, that radically changed, meaning, like all the way across the board. And so, you know, when I first took over, it's funny, a lot of people think moving from an on prem company into a SaaS company is just certain roles, certain skills, when the reality is it's a very different business. You're changing out a lot of the development functions. You have your operations radically changed, your sale, your go to market motions start changing.

And so that's been probably the biggest part of the transition that I've probably focused on for the last two and a half years. I'm in this role.

And fortunately, we've continued. We haven't really missed a beat. The growth engine has stayed. We've been rolling out new products that our clients have been taking up on a regular basis. We've been able to open up like some new areas for us and new markets staying within legal. But I mean, as far as some new verticals within legal, that's probably been the best part of it. Make no doubt about it. And I'm sure any other CEO at any other company and legal tech or anywhere else will tell you that transition is real and it requires different muscles inside the business than what you may have had to use in the past. Even though you were successful then, doesn't always mean you can carry that same success into this, this more modern technology world.

Chris Cartrett
So, yeah, you've been at adorant for a decade. You were at Thomson Reuters before that. Tell us a little bit more about your background and how you moved into where you are today.

Chris Cartrett
Yeah, so, you know, I pride myself in the fact that I began illegal. It makes me old, but I began.

Chris Cartrett
Illegal as old as me. Chris.

Chris Cartrett
There you go. In the early nineties, carrying a sales bag. It's the only way I know how to describe it. Door to door, talking to law firms, helping them understand how to do certain research. I was more on the specialty side, handling treatises and things like that for at the time. What was Thompson Corporation before we acquired Reuters and before we acquired West Publishing? And so I've had, I guess now it's 30 years in this kind of legal vertical overall. But coming up through sales, fortunate enough to, like, lead some of the acquisitions that we had at Thompson and then Thompson Reuters and then moving into running, you know, a large law place there, which I learned so much. Cause that was my first chance to really sit in meetings. Even though you didn't have a voice, you at least got to see how the meetings took place. And then from there, kind of parlaying that into, you know, the sales and strategy role at adorant and then ultimately into this role. Like, it's. It's been funny. I look back and I've had a lot of great successes. I made a lot of phenomenal friends, people who I still talk to from years ago that I worked with, you know, in different roles. And it's been a great ride. You know, it's funny, Bob, with everything we do, we have our ups and our downs. We have our successes and our failures. You like to think you learn a lot from your successes. The reality is I've probably learned more from my failures. If I'm really honest about it. So it's been a lot of fun.

And here in adorant, I'm here in our home office in Atlanta right now, we made a big focus just on culture and, like, how the business kind of comes together, how we try to work together to, like, serve our clients. And so I think all my years in doing this, seeing it done really well, I'm seeing it not sometimes not done so well, has really kind of helped shape how I've tried to drive this business.

Chris Cartrett
Yeah, you alluded to the pandemic, and obviously you came into this role. We were still kind of in the throes of it all at that point. What do you think was the impact of the pandemic on kind of the challenges that your customers face? And how has the company adopted to meet those challenges?

Chris Cartrett
Yeah, so I'll tell a tale on us that's kind of negative because we learned a lot about ourselves through the pandemic. You know, as a software company, I think most software companies globally were more prepared to work from home, things along those lines. I think a lot of our law firms, though, on the other hand, they were not, they can say they continued to be successful when they went to work from home. But I think what they also learned real fast was that their systems and their processes were not really set up for that type of an environment. So there were, there was a lot of adjustments going on, a lot of changes that had to happen and just how they worked collectively as a business. But the thing I would also tell you, Bob, and, you know, I'll tell the sin on us. I'll let other software vendors can say whether they had it or not. What also happened over the course of COVID is you end up, ended up because things were so decentralized. You had more and more users actually starting to leverage technology in a way that sometimes you may not have prepared the technology appropriately for the amount of users that may be hitting a system at a certain time or the change in work time zones and how stuff was happening. So even for technology companies, there was a lot of adjusting to, like, how we created our products and how we served our clients. If you'll remember, when we first went into COVID, I remember Webex, which so many people were using Webex. All of a sudden webex is crashing all the time.

Chris Cartrett
Never happened to Webex.

Chris Cartrett
Right. Well, that was not, that was nothing more than like, wow, im sure the people at Cisco were sitting there like, whoa, this is more usage than weve ever had. And then all of a sudden you see the zooms come up and all this other. So those kind of challenges, I think, impacted a lot of technology companies, and I actually think that made us better. Better, because from that point forward, it became a different way of testing, a different standard that you hold your software to before you roll it out to the market. It's unfortunate that sometimes you have to have those hiccups to make the business better, but that is basically what happens. So.

Chris Cartrett
Yeah, and a lot of that is kind of the infrastructure, but I assume it also carries over into product development and product roadmaps as well.

Chris Cartrett
100% carries over into that. Like, you literally start shifting and changing how you're building your products, what you're going to be able to do when you come to market. I mean, everything changed. That's the only way to say it.

Chris Cartrett
Again, with reference to the conference this week, the global momentum conference, what's the profile of your customers?

Chris Cartrett
What do they look like this year? According to my marketing team, I think this is another record year. Last year we set a record. The year before that, we could have probably set a record, didn't have enough hotel space. But it's funny, most of the people who come are true users, but we've been very fortunate to kind of get more and more c levels involved over the past few years. But I mean, we've made a very concerted effort about that. So the CIO's and the CFO's, some coos, a few executive directors, others are coming in to really learn more of more the vision pieces that we're going to think from maybe a larger, more strategic view of how adarint can serve their law firm.

Do you know, Bob, the thing is, at the end of the day, this is the part that I actually love about this. It really is the person who's like down in the weeds, who's taking care of the product on a daily basis, who's having to get the bills out the door, who's working within the application. So, like, we spend also a lot of money trying to fly people in from all over the world of our employees so that they get the opportunity to, like, hang out with them and see them listen to their experiences and learn, hey, this worked. This is not working the way we want it to. And I do believe, like, every time we do this conference, obviously there's a bounce as it relates to new business, those types of things. But I don't think we ever leave this conference that we don't leave like a laundry list of things that we want to take back and really get better at. And so that's the part that like I personally look forward to because it really, you know, it's the old iron sharpens iron. It really is the team helping us, or I should say our clients helping our team be better in how we do our jobs.

Chris Cartrett
Again, going back to when you became CEO, a press release went out at the time saying that as president and CEO, quote, Cartwright will take aggressive steps to further the company's cloud first strategy through its broad suite of solutions. So how are you doing on that?

Chris Cartrett
So I would say if that was my only goal, then I've done well. Unfortunately, I didn't nail exactly right.

So, no, we've done a really good job. Every product that we have now, everything is cloud first. Everything we still have. There's one of our product lines which is expert is expert is still more of your single tenant monolith managed service. But what's happened is over the past three, four years, we've been building out more of what you and I were classified as, like true SaaS, web enabled applications out of expertise. So it's actually creating an even better experience for our clients as they move over into Sierra, which is what we refer to as extra when you take it in the cloud. In the same amount of time, we've been coming out with new products on a pretty regular basis here. All of those native cloud applications, many of them were able to leverage Matty, which is our AI that we released last year, and that has just received incredible reception in the marketplace. And we've had incredible adoption across all the new applications that we've done, and that'll continue to be the goal as we go forward.

Chris Cartrett
Yeah, I know that you announced in March that you had reached 170 customers on Sierra at that point.

Chris Cartrett
Yeah, think about that, Bob. I mean, we only deal with like the big, we're not like a clio or a my case, that are, you know, dealing with thousands and thousands and thousands of law firms. We're only working with the biggest of the big around the world. And so that's a big number. I mean, if you think about that transition and what that means for those law firms as they're making that change, it's been a pretty seismic shift. So we're very happy with how that's progressed.

Chris Cartrett
And are those mostly firms that are transitioning off of expert onto Sierra?

Chris Cartrett
No, no, it's not. Actually, I want to say of the expert firms that have moved over, I think it's about half of them over the last really two or three years. We've been very fortunate, I would say, to take a lot of clients from our competitors around. But every one of them, when they leave our competitor, they go straight into Sierra. Every one of them, like none of them have taken on Prem. I mean, maybe a couple of firms in Germany or something like that. Every one of them have gone straight into Sierra. So that's been more of this kind of cloud first mentality that our clients are taking now. So that's. Anyway, that's been a real promising for all of us.

Chris Cartrett
So are the firms that are still on Sierra? I mean, is the, is the hope or the plan to eventually get everybody off of. Not on Salon Sierra, I mean, on expert is the hope to eventually get.

Chris Cartrett
Everybody to the cloud 100%. That is the goal. And our clients know that too. I mean, what's happening now? You know, at this momentum, we'll be rolling out some new products for our clients. And so I'll give you this as like the long story of adorant, but how it's actually playing out if you're an existing client. We've always had a rule inside the adrenal world that if you pay for something, you don't have to pay for it twice. So once you're in the cloud and you're in Sierra, in the old days, like just an expert, you had like classic. This is long before I ever. I think that was even before I was born. And then we would start building things that were in framework and people would transition over to framework. Well, there are still some items that you would be bringing into framework, but what's happened?

I guess we changed this about 18 months ago. Instead of rebuilding things in framework, now we're just taking everything into a native SaaS application. So for example, at this year's momentum, there's a brand new AR tool available to every single one of our clients.

And that is a new, latest and greatest AR tool. Our process has always been instead of trying to do this big massive change to the entire product and move it forward, which causes a lot of change, management problems can sometimes cause data problems with how people need to convert or change workflows or whatever else, we try to do this by module. And by doing it by module we're able to keep each client constantly moving forward. So in this case, there's a brand new AR module. We've always had a really strong invoice to cash piece of our business. Now we're actually adding an automation part onto this so that once the invoice goes out, even though we can manage all your rules and guidelines help you with how the appeals happen. Whatever else may happen related to a bill, when that bill is paid, we now are able to apply Maddie to it. Matty will line up that invoice and actually match it, or I should say match the invoice to the matter and then allow you to just simply post that automatically. We're bringing a lot of innovation to bear. That was in the past kind of native in the application that our clients are just seeing value for simply for being an adorant customer. And so that's, that's what we want this to be. We want them to buy into adorant, understanding that like, hey, we're going to keep bringing the new technology solutions to you. You just hang on.

Chris Cartrett
So again, as we're, as we're speaking, it's actually before you've made any of these announcements. So I'm a little bit in the dark still as to what it exactly is you're going to be announcing, but it.

I know that there's a new cloud platform. Is that the AR module you're talking about or is there something more substantial?

Chris Cartrett
No, that's about to tell you. So the big thing that we'll be rolling out to our clients and talking about is we've actually developed a cloud platform that sits underneath everything now. It's not totally new news, Bob, in the standpoint that I literally told every client this was coming last year. It's just that now we've actually delivered on it. So we're introducing what we call Striden. Striden is nothing more than a true platform to fit under all the different applications that we have. Several of the applications are already a part of Striden. So the AR module, for example, I was talking about, there's some other new reporting tools, pieces like this. The idea is what we're trying to create for our customers because our product mix is so large now. I mean, we handle everything from your timekeeping to how you manage your, your engagements with your clients all the way out to how you're handling your billing, all your core financials, your talent management. The idea is within a platform strategy we actually can create something that actually helps them have a greater experience in a consistent UI across all applications within the applications also being able to supplement and complement one another so that it's no longer about connectors or one way or two way APIs, but it's truly an integrated platform experience and what it will also do for us, Bob, this is going to be really significant, is it will allow us as we go forward to bring more products online faster and then leverage maddie in some more aggressive ways across the entire product line.

Does that make sense? Like, the big deal about the way I'd want to view this is this, our clients are not, they don't have to buy stripe, but we want them to understand, though, what we've done underneath the hood, because that's what's about to create the experience that ultimately that you would look for if you were working with a Microsoft or a salesforce or an oracle or anyone along those lines. And so that's what the big next step is.

Chris Cartrett
So does that make the products kind of more modular in a sense?

Chris Cartrett
Well, they've always been modular. In some ways, you still are able to retain the individual pieces of the product. So, like, if you're a client running SAP or three e or whatever else, you can still be able to get those individual modules if that's what you need. But if you have multiples of those, we now have a way through the platform of creating a very different experience that can truly help you share data and information across the entire application. Like it's very common for people to have, you know, something from the Vi suite, to have Bill Blast, which is our billing tool and invoice tool, to be able to leverage people. And, you know, one of the new products is coming out is called resource allocation. It's a way for you to leverage people that you have within your business and how you want to assign them to matters and understanding all the different places that they're working. So the platform allows us to have that truly integrated experience. But then if you have other applications from the ad rent suite, that same information now can be shared amongst those applications as well.

Chris Cartrett
Yeah, that makes sense.

Chris Cartrett
I'll tell you the other thing too, Bob. This is always the part about nailing it, and I think we're close, let's put it that way. If we do this right in the way that we are initially rolling this out, and as everything kind of comes into the platform, it actually will reduce our customers cost. And that's one of the other big parts about this. We can increase functionality, we can actually reduce cost, and that will dramatically enhance that customer experience, which has always been our kind of number one focus.

Chris Cartrett
You mean reduce costs directly for them or reduce your costs and therefore pass that along to them?

Chris Cartrett
A little bit about actually, I mean, if we're honest about it, it could be a little bit of, but their direct cost would be the biggest impact because a lot of times now they're having to manage integrations with other systems.

They're having to pull data in other places to create reports, ports. There's a lot of different places. They're standing up other systems to manage products or whatever else it is. So this will start to remove all that kind of expense.

Bob Ambrogi
If you've been paying attention so far, you've heard Chris refer several times to Maddy. That's Maddi, and it's Adarin's AI legal assistant. So what exactly is Matty and what is Aderins strategy more broadly around AI?

We'll find out in just a moment. But first, please take this opportunity to learn about the sponsors who so generously support this podcast.

Experience the next generation of legal technology with paradigm paradigms platforms, practice Panther, Maris case, Loli Law, Bill for time and trust books all offer lawyers the ultimate toolkits for success across various practice areas and business needs. Whether you require comprehensive practice management platforms, native online payment solutions, or robust legal accounting software, paradigm is the one stop shop for law firms of all sizes and practices.

Discover the paradigm difference@joinparadigm.com welcome back to Lawnext. I'm speaking with Chris Cartrett, president and CEO of the legal business and practice management technology company Adorant. As this episode is being released, he is in the throes of global momentum, the company's global customer conference, which is taking place in Nashville. In the second part of our conversation, we go deeper into Aderan strategy with respect to artificial intelligence, and Chris talks about the message he'll be sharing with customers this week about the future of the company and the future of their experience as customers. Let's get back to the conversation.

Chris Cartrett
You've been talking a lot about Maddie, and for anybody who doesn't know who Maddie is or what Matty is, could you provide a little bit of an explanation?

Chris Cartrett
Yeah, so, Matty, we have a lot of different AI's that we leverage internally at Adira. And when we went to market, I was watching all the other legal vendors refer to things as blank blank. Has AI or AI enabled whatever. And the problem with that is, is there are so many AI tools that we all use. I mean, everybody in our office here has Microsoft copilot.

So that's, you know, we understand what the AI is key when you go into like legal tech is, I don't want to just have AI and what it can do for me. I need something that actually is prepared to help me for whatever it is, the tasks that I'm trying to do. So when somebody hears Matty, they should understand that we have trained the AI on our data. So last year when we rolled out Onyx Onyx, we were able to, over the course of about a year, we were able to train some AI models on well over 10,000 outside counsel guidelines that we had through other products that we actually serviced with our clients.

Well, that training means that then when a top ten law firm adds this into their business from day one, when they go to upload XYZ insurance companies latest outside counsel guidelines, the thing is, the technology is already prepared to understand. Yeah, this is what I'm looking for. Generate a rule or generate a guideline, and then seamlessly integrate that into your time system, your billing system, or into your e billing and invoicing system. So this year, Maddie's going a little bit further because now we actually have been over the last year working through narratives.

So now Matty's going to be able to take and look at narratives, understand through our invoice product, narratives that typically are getting held up by certain clients and are not, and then actually make notifications back to let somebody understand that, hey, this has a high likelihood of a violation. This is, you know, here's, here's what could actually get through, or do you want to accept it the way it is? So, so we're trying to continue to train Maddie on, like, real use cases that we think will have the biggest impact to our clients.

Chris Cartrett
So Maddie becomes kind of the undercore for all these different AI applications as you, as you develop them. Onyx is something you're doing with itimekeep, too, with Matty. Right. Is that.

Chris Cartrett
That's the big. So we rolled out passive time capture last year, which really leveraged some legacy AI tools, but then within the narrative piece that I was just talking about, that is where that big training has come in. The first thing we're going to do.

Yeah, we were able to take the invoice. There's so many time narratives that just go on a simple invoice that we were able to just do a quick evaluation of the time narratives on an invoice and let a biller know or let the legal secretary know, like, hey, these things right here, this is going to hit a violation when it goes out the door. So this is where leveraging AI can have a significant impact for a law firm and really cut down on a lot of the challenges that we have in turning invoices into cash.

Chris Cartrett
Right. You know, obviously, you're doing a lot of work around developing and deploying AI applications. What's your take on the implications of this for law practice more generally. There's been just so much talk and so much focus on this over the past year. When you're at this conference this week talking to people, what are you telling them about what they should be paying attention to with regard to generative AI?

Chris Cartrett
Yeah, so there's, it's interesting, I was reading an article this week. I know because I kind of, I'm enjoying from the sidelines watching the arm race that's taking place between LexisNexis and TR on the Westlaw side, because that is, I'm so impressed by what both of them are doing, knowing how a lawyer's struggles in the practice of law, whether it be through research, documents, how you're serving the client, whatever else it is. So it's just really impressive. Our world has always been true business of law, and from our standpoint, we've always felt, and to be honest with you, I wish we could have even gone faster. We've always felt that there was huge opportunities for like, true automation to be in the product. But what's happened with llama 7.0, some of the chat GPT, some of the other AI tools that have come out recently, is that now you actually finally do have the technology that can allow you to take certain amounts of data that you have, learn from it, train a system, and have it automate some of the processes so that people are not. It always bothered me that like an individual would be hired to do a role and they had to spend 75% of their role entering data or typing stuff in that you were paying these people a lot more money than to sit there and type this stuff in. When the reality is I'll go back to the AR automation, that somebody within the accounts receivable department technology should be able to present to them what they should focus on and then help them understand these are the items that need help because the other 75% of these are completely clean and let them go.

And so that type of efficiency coming into the business should actually help people work smarter and hopefully just create a better customer experience for their clients with how they work with the law firm. Yeah.

Chris Cartrett
So automate the tasks that can be automated, the probably more routine and repeatable tasks, and free people up to do more with the rest of their time.

Chris Cartrett
It is fun though, Bob. I mean, you're probably closer to this than I am. I constantly read all these things going on with all the other companies and their AI products they're bringing to bear. It's interesting. I guess we can all say OCR is AI. But there are certain things that we're starting to do that if we're really honest, we probably should have been doing that ten years.

Chris Cartrett
Yeah.

Chris Cartrett
Because that's where that first came out. Some of the generative pieces, though, that are starting to happen, like the Lexus release this past week, whatever it was, that's getting fun.

So it's going to be a lot of fun watching what happens in our space in the coming months and years.

Chris Cartrett
Of course, those two companies have been having an arms race or whatever it is for a long time now. Yeah, this just puts a new spin on it.

Chris Cartrett
It was actually very, very good. So I'm. Yeah, this is a lot of fun to watch.

Chris Cartrett
So, yeah, while we're on the AI front, I know that you just last week, maybe a couple weeks ago, announced a collaboration with Vanderbilt Law school that involves kind of working with their lab on generative AI. So can you just kind of tell me a little bit about that and what you're going to be doing there?

Chris Cartrett
Yeah. So you'll really enjoy this, and some of your listeners and followers who work in large law firms will even get more fun out of this. So where this all came from, I've been very fortunate. We've hired some really good development people here who really advance AI tremendously in our business. And when I say it's really going across our entire product line now, we are truly leveraging it across the product line. Some of it is new modules. Some of it's just things we're building in to make the products just work better. What happened, though, through these conversations, is some of our partners, AWS, Microsoft, others, we're starting to give some good kudos back to our team. And so a conversation ultimately, was had with the Vanderbilt law school that they were wanting to really start educating their lawyers. And what are some of the areas of AI for them to really about? Them starting to learn and understand before they actually get into the workplace. So right now, a lot of this is more education back and forth. Meaning recently, our CTO spoke to, I'm not sure if there were second year law students or who it was at Vanderbilt, literally, about. What are some of the things that you face as a new associate in a law firm, and how is AI helping some of those things that may have been challenges for your predecessors in the past that we can now manage with technology? And Bob, the funny thing about this is when he started getting in, just helping them understand rules and guidelines around creating a bill and who can post to a bill, and this stuff it was literally like watching people like, I had no idea that this complexity was coming with the chosen profession I had made.

So it was. It was actually fun to see the students start to learn and engage. But then where we're also taking this is that we're leveraging Vanderbilt to come one speak to our entire user base at momentum, but then also to our employees, meaning, hey, here's the things that we're wrestling with. Here's the things that. Where we're hoping AI and technology can have benefit, because I really believe if we can leverage this in the right way on the knowledge here, I've got some really smart people here. They'll be able to figure out, the better they understand the problems, how they can go wrestle and tackle.

Right now, that's really the main part of this. And then hopefully, it'll grow out of that into some things a little bit more collaborative.

Chris Cartrett
That's great. Good people working at that Vanderbilt lab.

Chris Cartrett
So, yeah, it's a really good. I mean, they're impressive any way you cut it. They're very impressive.

Chris Cartrett
Yeah, probably every time I see you, I ask about acquisition. I mean, I know that Adirondack's made a number of significant acquisitions over the years, and just wondering to what extent that kind of remains part of your strategy going forward. And if so, are there particular areas you're looking at?

Chris Cartrett
Yeah. So I'll tell you, I'll give you a little bit more details, Bob. The last time we talk, we're always inquisitive. We're always looking. I have a lot of hopes here for 2024, because we had met with some private equity groups about a month and a half ago. I guess it was the amount of activity that's already started here at the beginning of this year is almost equal to all of last year. So, understanding where markets are right now and some other things, I do believe that we'll see a lot more transition transactions as the year continues. We're very hopeful. It's interesting, though, we're in a unique place right now, because we finally have the muscles as it relates to how we build products and bring them to market that have really developed. So for the things that we're looking to acquire, it has to be something that takes us somewhere faster into, like, a new area. So, like, last year or two years ago. I'm sorry. When we acquired Vi, we knew we wanted to have something around people and talent for all the stuff that we do related to matters and how you manage a matter.

So that made sense to us because for us to take the time to try to build that, we still wouldn't have the reputation that Vi had already established. So it made sense for that acquisition. So over the course of 24 and 25, that's really kind of what we're looking at. What is something that would actually take us into a place that we knew as a part of our long term strategy that can get us there faster. Because anytime you acquire a company, you've got to have a really good right to win. Otherwise, you would never want to acquire the business. Otherwise, they're better off without you, to be honest with you. So in this case, we really try to protect the right to win, and we're just trying to look for businesses where we can add value, but also help us really advance our long term goals.

Chris Cartrett
Yeah. And I'll ask only because I know there's been a lot of buzz around it over the last couple of weeks. The question of handshake, I saw Caroline Hill wrote about it on her publication in which you adamantly denied any rumors about the imminent death or anything else of handshake. But do you want to say anything about that?

Chris Cartrett
No. You know, it's really interesting to me when I saw that we have more than 800 employees and then contractors over the top of that, and it's been really interesting to me how the community has reacted to four people. Let me say this. They were really good employees. I don't want to ever say that they were not. They were rock stars. But I think every CEO of every company on the planet, every year, you do an evaluation of your product lines, of where you see certain growth opportunities and also where you're trying to transition.

When you're transitioning the product line, sometimes you do need to look at some different skills for how you're trying to do that. So it sucks, because a couple of the people, for sure, are people that I think many of us in the legal community have known for years. And I think that's why the buzz kind of continued with it. But all I can say is, you know, we added, I think, two new clients to handshake just this past, like, 45 days is continuing to do well as a product line. There are some roadmap items that I need to happen in a more aggressive light. And so we're hoping the new people and teams that we have assigned to it can help us do that. I will say this, though. Is it for me personally, these are four very good developers that sometimes you may not fit within a certain plan of an organization. Doesn't mean that they're not still rock stars and there's a great place for them. So the fact that all this kind of got out there, I didn't, you know, I. As long as they were trying to make an attack on adorant, that's okay. I just, I didn't, I felt kind of bad.

Chris Cartrett
Yeah, it sounds like it just came picked up off the discussion.

Chris Cartrett
Yeah, exactly.

Chris Cartrett
Are you as this airs during the conference will you have given a keynote, do you give a keynote during the conference?

Chris Cartrett
I do. So I always start the conference with it.

Chris Cartrett
What's your message?

Chris Cartrett
So I will begin, I'll roll out striden to everybody. You know, my big thing this year. So like in 23 this past year, well as a business on paper we had the best year we've ever had and we've been very fortunate to have multiple years that have had just record growth, record numbers, all that stuff. We rolled out more products. I would say we saw more client problems. There's still some elements of like we're really trying to focus in on the customer experience. There's still pieces of that that I don't feel like we've completely cracked. That's why the release of Striden is so important because as the technology continues to move forward and now like exponentially moves forward we do believe that that's going to create an even greater experience for our clients. But Bob, if I'm also honest, I'm happy to share my sins with you. I guess you just became my priest.

Chris Cartrett
Between the two of us and I'm.

Chris Cartrett
Not even Catholic, so. But like when I look at the breadth of our products like we literally handle everything from the HRPs, a lot of CIO products, we're the number one docketing play hands down in North America. So we're touching so many different parts of a law firm that creating a more cohesive client experience is what we're really focused on and how we're spending in 24. So Striden will help us do that from a platform technology piece. But then there's a major investment that we have going on right now as it relates to like client account management, client experience.

A lot more from it relates to like self help investment so people can solve some of their own problems faster. So I'm excited about what we're doing there. That's, I mean, beyond the technology piece and, you know, all that stuff is, could be expensive. The investment on the true people process side is my biggest thing and I think that's what I want our clients to understand as they come out of momentum is that we're not just taking care of you within the products. We're really focused on how you interact with our business and making that a more seamless, more positive experience across the board.

Chris Cartrett
Chris, I've been asking you a whole bunch of questions here. Is there anything else that you wanted to say or you really been itching for me to ask you that I haven't brought up yet?

Chris Cartrett
No. I mean, listen, I always enjoy talking to you. You know that. I was sitting here trying to think, is there anything I didn't tell you about that's kind of been out there? You know, I think the only other thing I'd point out as it relates to technology, because I do think this is important. So we're really trying to leverage AI as a business. Like, if we're going to try to roll products out to our clients, it's really important that all the people within our walls and all of our offices around the globe are also buying in to how AI can benefit them. And you know, Bob, I think that is something that's happening in the business. It's also helping us get better ideas for how to serve our clients. So I'll give you one. For example, we have an application that we use internally now called Ask Matty. Ask Matty, which is nothing more than a true, kind of generative AI tool, just like you would use with chat, GPT four, or whatever else it may be, literally takes all of our documentation, all of the different case notes, teams, channels where support people may be talking the product or dev, maybe talking to somebody else and aggregates it together so that a services or support person can actually go in and ask Maddie questions for things that they may have spent a lot of time having to research in the past. Well, that's having an enormous impact internally, helping us kind of achieve that goal of the type of customer experience that we want our clients to have. Where our goal, knock on wood, is that we were able to roll that out to our clients themselves, all those clients that are within Sierra, other things, because it does leverage the platform piece, they were actually able to roll that out in a way that now they can start to handle some of their own support and other challenges.

That's just the beginning, because once you're able to do that, then you can start feeding your individual firm data, and now that can also become a piece of the ask Matty part. So it's been really fun to watch this happen because the more individuals inside the business want to play and learn from AI, it's actually helping us create better solutions and ideas that are going to better serve our clients.

Chris Cartrett
How would you compare law firms receptiveness to AI today to their receptiveness to the cloud a couple of years ago? Or maybe even still today?

Chris Cartrett
Yeah. So, you know, it's funny, I've talked to some different chief innovation officers in different firms and I think they are all seeing the opportunities. You know what? It's no different than how we've done with every new thing that enters the space. You have a group of lawyers who know this ultimately is going to have an impact. I need to figure it out, adopt it and bring it into my fold. And then you have another group that's like, I'll wait until it's ready. The challenge you have for those that are going to wait until they think things are ready, that could be too late. So I'm actually impressed. Like, I literally this morning was emailing with a CIO in the Midwest who I know is doing some unbelievably creative things related to generative AI and how they support certain practice groups within their law firm. Those things are happening everywhere. I was with a firm in Sydney just a few months ago. They are like whole practice groups. Here's how we're going to do this. Here's how we're going to create certain contracts. It's been fun to watch it pop up in pockets. But I wouldn't say you're seeing the entire law firm like, you know, yes, this is where we want to go. It seems to be more certain practice leaders really leaning on innovation, people in the firm and then them starting to explore and do more creative things. So I'm an optimist on that point. I think we're just getting started.

Chris Cartrett
Well, Chris, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me today, and thanks sharing the news coming out of your conference.

Bob Ambrogi
Really appreciate it, brother.

Chris Cartrett
Always. I love the chance to talk to you. So I look forward to seeing you again. Okay, take care of yourself.

Chris Cartrett
See you soon.

Bob Ambrogi
Big thanks to Chris Cartrett, president and CEO of adarent, for joining me today.

I hope you enjoyed the conversation. If you'd like to share your own thoughts or comments on today's show, please do so by messaging me on social media, LinkedIn X, wherever you happen to be, or by emailing me directly, ambrogiomail.com. And if you're a fan of the show, please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Law next is a production of Law next media. I'm your host, Bob Ambrosi.

I hope you'll join us again next time for another episode of Law. Next.

Ep 247: Aderant CEO Chris Cartrett on the Company's Cloud-First Strategy and New Cloud Platform

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction

2: Aderant's Transformation

3: Role of AI in Legal Tech

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

Companies

Books

Guest Name(s):

Content Warnings:

Transcript