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Behind every great law firm is a team of professionals working hard to keep operations running smoothly. With the challenges of staying on top of complex billing requirements, managing time reports, and navigating constantly shifting industry trends, it’s easy to see why most firms write off millions in uncollected revenue each year.
To help your firm stay in the green, we’re introducing Studio A, a new podcast from Aderant.
Studio A is purpose-built to help you run your firm like a well-oiled machine. In each episode, legal business leaders and industry experts will share problems firms face and the revolutionary approaches and cutting-edge software they use to solve them. Because ultimately, in the business of legal firms and the ever-evolving world of technology, you can’t afford to fall behind.
Nicholas Wolter (00:00):
Whether that's taking on harder cases or deeper work, it allows you to take on more work if you get it right and you become more efficient. Not only does your profitability go up, but the amount of good work you can do increases.
Will Ayers (00:11):
Behind Every Green Law Firm are bold leaders and powerful solutions that help them run a better business. Welcome to Studio A, the home of legal tech innovation. Welcome to Studio A, powered by Aderant, your podcast for the latest conversations shaping legal tech. I'm your host, Will Ayers. On this episode, we are going to talk all things AI. We're going to talk Stridyn as well. I have the one and only Nicholas Wolter. He is the Senior Director of Platform, Data and AI at Aderant. He's been on the show before, but now he is a seasoned veteran, I'll say. But he's back on the podcast again to talk all things innovation. Nick, how are you doing today?
Nicholas Wolter (00:55):
Hey, doing great. Thanks for having me well.
Will Ayers (00:57):
I'm excited to have you on. I remember when I had you on the first time, you were nervous, but now you are not nervous. You have a nice outfit on. So things have changed. I appreciate that. This is the last time I talked to you.
Nicholas Wolter (01:08):
Yeah, maybe a little. Especially in the industry.
Will Ayers (01:11):
Things are changing fast. That's why we're doing this interview. So we're going to jump right in and talk about the importance of data. When we talked in the past, a lot of the focus was on building the right data and AI foundation. Where are we at with that now?
Nicholas Wolter (01:27):
Yeah, so it's interesting. Well, I don't know if you remember, last time I was here on your podcast. It was actually the first time. And I mentioned I was already excited for Momentum 2026. Kind of a crazy thing to say at Momentum 2025, but it's because I could feel so much change coming. I couldn't have predicted the future, couldn't have understood where we would be now and our advanced agentic engineering, but holy cow, was I right to be excited. There's so much to be happy and look forward to. So one of the things that have changed a lot is our data pipeline and what we thought it was going to be for. So we started building the stride and data plane for insights, intelligence, and obviously analytics, right? Reports for firms, real-time dashboards. But now in the age of AI, since we built it from such a grassroots approach, building blocks on top of AWS and other tech, it's actually being able to be leveraged for a firm's second brain.
(02:15):
And with AI, context is important. Context is everything. AI is stateless. So if you can give a snapshot of a firm's real-time data into that context window when you're invoking the AI, when you run an inference, you get a lot smarter of an answer, a lot smarter of a result. The AI can actually know your firm and maybe even your clients we're experimenting with right now. So that data pipeline that we set out to build, we found so much power coming from that really, which is really exciting.
Will Ayers (02:39):
Now this technology really changes the day-to-day operations of law firms. When we talk about moving towards intelligence to revenue, what decisions actually start to change inside the firm?
Nicholas Wolter (02:52):
Yeah, so it's kind of interesting. We're trying to figure out how to improve revenue, how to increase profitability. And one of the things that we're finding is we keep talking about async work or agents doing things autonomously. Well, just like humans, we want to make sure agents are doing the right work. They're focused on the right thing. And so a big portion of that is compliance. So whether it's Harvey, Lagora, another AI tool for POL, you want to make sure that just like an attorney, the work is compliant. We're not going down a path, not spending time and tokens on something that isn't billable. And we've really embraced that with our new compliance engine, our three-tier engine to be able to put and inject some of those compliance rules into the runtime of those ages.
Will Ayers (03:32):
Now our first interview, you said that you were excited about Stridyn and you mentioned that again on this episode. How does a unified platform like Stridyn change what's possible when it comes to turning data into real-time usable Intel?
Nicholas Wolter (03:47):
Yeah, so that's a great question. So kind of like I mentioned with the data pipeline that allows you to create that second brain, that understanding, the historical understanding of a firm when it operates. Stridyn and the operational data, the real-time data for agents to view and interact with is key. With bespoke point solutions, you can't do that. You need a platform. Once you have all that data in one area, it paints a better picture for an agent and it can interact with more of the data in real time. I should say it allows the agent to be able to view things across the board and recognize patterns that we wouldn't have.
Will Ayers (04:19):
When systems like Sierra billing and time capture are connected, what becomes possible that simply wasn't there before?
Nicholas Wolter (04:27):
So it's funny, actually I just got into a litle bit in the last question, but some people are better or worse at it, but there's a lot of data in a firm, a lot of data. Whether that's PL metadata or insights and that there's BOL data, it's too much for one person to keep in their brain and realize things may be related or not related. Well, that's where AI shines, right? These context windows, whether you're talking 250,000 tokens or a million tokens, pretty large. You can get a lot of information, a lot of data packed into that. And that's basically in the real time, the front of the brain of the AI. So it can see, it can make those connections unlike a human can. So bringing all that together really, really is what powers deeper insights and maybe uncovering stones that you wouldn't have been able to otherwise.
Will Ayers (05:05):
Let's talk about data requirements. As AI becomes more embedded and engulfed in the ecosystem of these solutions, how do data requirements change and what do firms need to get right now that they didn't have to think about before?
Nicholas Wolter (05:20):
People often say slop in, slop out, or garbage in, garbage out. It's still true. AI and different programs can help see through some of that and organize that, but you still want to make sure your data is clean as possible. I mentioned that token window, that context window, it's large, but you still have some context right. You have some drop off when you have too much data. So making sure you can really fine tune and make sure it's efficient. I mean, something that we as Aderant are helping with and trying to drive, but a firm helping us along that journey with data cleanliness practices really, really helps go a long way as well.
Will Ayers (05:51):
When I talk to you, I like to take a deep dive into the tech stack and really provide people with examples of how this innovation is driving better results for law firms. You mentioned internally that we're seeing deeper work, not faster work. What does that look like in practice and can you give us an example of that?
Nicholas Wolter (06:10):
Oh yeah, absolutely. It's kind of funny, right? I get it from my boss from everywhere. They're like, "Hey, we're saying that agents and AI allow us to run 70% faster. Why don't I see exact 70% faster in the work?" And I think it comes down to a couple things. We're allowing for more freedom, some more real deep thought work happening. So dependent upon the task, you may see 70% increase in speed, but you also may see 50% or 30%. It's because it allows us to just uncover stones and work on stuff that we would've had to skip otherwise. I'm sure we've all been there. We have a deadline approaching. You have so much time before that and you have to get it fit in there. Well, if AI starts taking away some of the more boring work, the tedious work allows you to fill that same amount of time with more thought, with experimentation even to figure out with some of our developers even, you could have one shot at a solution program by hand in four hours.
(06:59):
Well, now in four hours, maybe tested out two, three, even four things. And that's really helpful because again, you get a better end result. If I could give one example personally about AI that kind of blew my mind, I had to give a presentation the other day to the sales team and I was thinking about it. Oh my God, I have so much stuff to do prepping for this amazing event, momentum. And I sat down to get the presentation, the slides ready to go and I just started with the content. I just wrote down in a text document everything that I wanted to cover. And by the time I had it down in a bulleted list, it wasn't even that well organized. I have an AI slide program that I use. I fed it to it and it captured everything I wanted to say and more and organized it in a way that would've taken me hours ready to present.
(07:39):
I'm not exaggerating when I say AI let me spend 98% of all prep time for that doing real thought work, getting thoughts on paper, getting them ready to present, and none of the BS of formatting slides, creating slides, stuff like that.
Will Ayers (07:52):
Absolutely love that. Now this is a rapid time of innovation and I believe that the systems and the innovation around AI, they got to coincide together. How do you think about building systems today that can evolve alongside these changing AI models and tools? Because as you know more than anyone, things are moving very fast and there's always something new each week and each month.
Nicholas Wolter (08:18):
Yeah, it's almost overwhelming, right? You can almost say on a day-to-day basis now things are changing and there's only really one solution to that. If somebody tells you what the future's going to look like, they're lying or don't understand AI. Things are changing so fast. And so what we've found is going at extreme lengths, not to paint ourselves in a corner, build on foundations, on principles that you know, just like the data pipeline, we built for analytics, reporting and insights and now is great for evergreen context windows, real time left side of the brain for agents. So being able to not get committed or stuck on one approach and having the willingness to pivot when necessary is the key there because again, nobody can predict the future.
Will Ayers (08:57):
Where do you see the biggest opportunity for firms over the next three to five years if they get their data and AI strategy right?
Nicholas Wolter (09:05):
I think it maybe leads into their day-to-day business, right? Whether that's taking on harder cases or deeper work, maybe it allows you to take on more work if you get it right and you become more efficient. Not only does your profitability go up, but the amount of good work you can do increases. And oftentimes people talk about, "Hey, what's going to happen with AI, the workforce positions?" Well, like Derek said on stage, the pipe is getting bigger, right? Think about how many startups there are now and acquisitions. M&A is only growing. There's going to be so much more legal work that we're going to need these tools to help keep up with the pace of the legal industry.
Will Ayers (09:37):
Now before we wrap, I want to get your perspective and your insight since you're on a team that's really driving innovation across the space. From your perspective, what role should Aderant play in shaping the future of AI?That's
Nicholas Wolter (09:50):
A good question. Yeah, I kind of have a spicy take, maybe a hot take on it. There's so much competition and AI startups popping up left and right, small and big. Who knows what's going to be there in one year, five years. I think what we can do specifically is help firms not get too committed, not get stuck. We can be the platform that basically holds the firm's data. We already are. And I see that going into the future saying, "Hey, we have our MCP servers integrate with the innovative startup of today or pivot to another one tomorrow or allow turnkey plugability to test out new applications." I actually talked to a lot of firms here and they're all experimenting with several AI tools and they said the cost isn't the price of the tool itself. It's really the changing, the context switching, the setting up, tearing down.
(10:39):
I think we can really help there. If we're home based for these firms, we got the core data and the connections to do so. You don't have to commit with us. That should be our tagline. We can help you experiment and really get something set up that's amazing.
Will Ayers (10:51):
Well, Nick, I love everything that you are doing that your team is doing and I already know that you'll be back on the show. So thanks again for stopping by. And the next time I want you to interview me. I want you to be the host of Studio A and I'll be the guest.
Nicholas Wolter (11:05):
I can't wait.
Will Ayers (11:06):
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. That was Nicholas Wolter from Aderant. If you enjoyed that conversation, be sure to check us out on all major streaming platforms. You've been tuned in to Studio A power by Adera. Thanks for listening to Studio A. For more from this episode, visit Aderant.com. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss a beat and we'll see you next time in Studio A.