[Music] good morning I have a question for you do you understand legal Tech what does it mean and how it's enabling lawyers nowadays today I have an expert in the field my guest for today is Antoine Kanaan the CEO and founder of HAQQ and a very dear friend good morning Antoine im very happy to be here Ahmed thank you for having me thank you very much for coming welcome to Dubai I know you're very much frequently traveling between uh buut and Dubai and Abu Dhabi and uh few you're all over and a few other places yeah but Dubai I love Dubai it holds a special place in my heart we started the here the origin story always comes back to Dubai the heart is in Dubai you know welcome back welcome back thank you for coming and um as as a guest of Monday legal we we religiously ask lawyers and legal professionals and everybody of our guests how do they caffeinate themselves in the morning what's your coffee I always drink my coffee black no sugar and I drink a lot of it because you know the culture in the Middle East if you ever go meet someone they have to give you coffee and you can't say no you have to have the coffee and I meet a lot of people so every day I end up drinking maybe three four liters of caffeine wow yeah okay so my coffee ritual is unless I'm in a meeting don't drink coffee that's great um I want you to tell us a little bit about uh legal Tech can you please try to explain as much as you can to uh to us what does it mean where did the word come from and how is it helping lawyers nowadays awesome so it's a compound word right it's legal and Tech and the meaning is very apparent once we take these two words independently and then kind of combine them legal industry is all about getting people access to their rights it's about making sure we resolve disputes quickly and justice prevails like they say right legal industry Justice industry whatever you want to call it lawyers are integral because no one can ever access their rights without a lawyer they're always the medium and everything we experience when it comes to the legal sector we have to experience it through a lawyer right it's so vicarious Tech is something that's not just a trend illegal it's a trend in every field and it's revolutionizing things because with the power of automation with the power of centralized databases and so many other things that Tech brings us we can really become 50 66,000 times more productive and that means we can get 6,000 times more people access to better quality legal services and that's the mission behind legal Tech the mission behind legal Tech is about empowering lawyers with the proper tools and Technologies to fulfill their societal Mission better which is make sure their clients have proper representation can access Justice better and get what they deserve great I I think it's it's a great explanation to how legal Tech is working with us I remember in very early days when I was a child working with my my father in in his office um even to to I don't know uh clean the library the the the the bookshelf or or do something that I've seen the development from the typewriter into the electric typewriter into the computer in the beginning and I I saw um how technology have evolved so much but I want you to tell us about today how the legal Tech what are the um applications and what are the the the the tools that is considered the legal Tech away from the other computer the traditional uh tools that we have as as software Hardware that everybody right now is is using but what are the applications of legal Tech into the legal work uh for the lawyers today that you see are changing the industry right so that's a fantastic question because I mean Microsoft Word is Tech and lawyers use it but it's not legal Tech is it yes because it's such a general use case it's about writing a document legal Tech is a lot more tailor made okay it's like going to your favorite tailor requesting a suit made just for you and that's how lawyers should feel about legal Tech it's something that's made just for them sometimes like in the case of HCK by other legal professionals as well and that's where the synergies get unlocked they should really think about legal Tech as an accelerator right now with the Advent of artificial intelligence you know AI has become sort of a Boogyman it's going to come and replace lawyers it's going to come change things you're not going to need the lawyer anymore and a lot of ways yes and you have companies like do not pay I think it recently went public and do not pay it's entire thesis is we will give you your legal services without having go to go to a lawyer yeah but I think that's the wrong thesis I don't think Tech is the enemy I think pen and paper is the enemy I think lawyers should side with tech I think they should become Tech enabled Tech empowered and use these sorts of tools to really 10x their productivity to really engage and connect better with existing clients and even with newer clients and what's more what's better than a digital legal Community for lawyers right because lawyers we're all over the world and you know this yourself the power of community because you're the founder of the Emirates legal Network yes lawyers love Community they love getting together so Tech should be a calling card Tech should be you know the trumpet the banner and we should rally around it and we should be forming communities of lawyers that are cross border because then and only then can we really see a change in the industry and with lawyers who are really expecting an Roi from Tech it's it's so diverse Ahmed so you have you have Tech that can write contracts better for you faster you can save so much on expenses all the root work that's in automation that is multi-disciplinary all of that you can centralize and consolidate and you can do it much faster and much better and a good lawyer that has really good Tech behind them that's a great lawyer no longer good that's a great lawyer I totally agree with you I totally agree with you me personally my personal experience I I tried legal Tech in in lead generation by just giving a couple of answers every uh every day for free free to uh to to to to gen to the general public like there are platforms that creates questions and these questions get answered by lawyers who are registered onto the platform and this was one of the let's say the M main star starting points for me with the legal Tech and later on I started Emirates legal Network for creating a social Society for lawyers and it worked fantastic later on I I switched to use the AI and uh I'm I'm now developing an AI uh solution and there you go just by the regular even the general um AI uh tools like chatib and Gemini and and tools like they're amazing they actually enable you to save a lot of money and a lot of time um and and it helped me so I'm imagining the focused the niche legal softwares and apps would transform a lot our industry I'm I'm I'm I'm a big advocate for the legal tech and and technology in general and I try to push everybody I work with into this because it actually work and I transform the experience it's a lot more fun actually yes yeah yeah yeah yeah it is it is a lot more fun because you make more money of course and you save more money and everyone's happy very true and that's the promise of tech it's a promise of abundance we have to be optimistic right we can't let the boogie man get to us AI is not going to replace us yeah because AI will need someone to guide it and you're going to be that person as a lawyer hopefully yeah hopefully yes and that's really the promise of legal Tech sometimes I see this a lot especially outside the GCC lawyers especially managing Partners they tend to forget they're running a business right they think that running a law firm is something that is completely Sacro sank and completely differentiated between running that and running a business they don't really see the business model behind that it's an agency right it's a Services business and the rules that apply to marketing agencies to software agencies or to Medical practices even those same rules apply to lawyers you have the core competency which is Law and then you have the non-core competency which is the administration the marketing The Branding the accounting and all the other things you need to do to run a proper business and I think Tech can do so much so much in helping lawyers solidify their practice and focus on really delivering their core value while not having to worry about the stuff that they're not so expert at like the accounting like the scheduling like anything else right and I think Tech here really can do a lot and I think well this is a number right I believe and I know that it's lawyers fault for not taking Tech to the next level because I'm going to ask you a question do you know how many lawyers worldwide use pen and pay paper rely on pen and paper versus any other uh software like a percentage so let's say you have 100 you're talking about today today today worldwide oh I I would be hoping 10% yeah no it's 90 what 90% of lawers serious yes it's a statistic you can Google it 90% of lawyers all right rely on pen and paper to run their practice and then you're left with 10% and you might be thinking that 10% is using legal Tech no 5% is using legal Tech and the other 5% is just using Tech right so this is a virgin Market this is like on the cusp of greatness here you're going to see lawyers who are usually late adopters especially with technology and there are many reasons for this but you're going to start seeing the entire legal Market do a shift towards technology and specifically legal technology and that's when the tsunami is going to happen and I I know I said I blame lawyers for that because at the end of the day there's no excuse for using pen and paper absolutely they can always use any other form of technology I know I said that but honestly something else to consider is there aren't that many good legal Tech platforms out there right and so it's very difficult to find the right platform form the right sort of technology that will help you and sort of fit and seamlessly into your existing workflows that's kind of one of the things we wanted to do at Hawk is build this perfect platform for lawyers and I hope I hope and this is our mission right our mission is to digitize lawyers connectivity productivity and Community that's our mission it doesn't matter if we're the ones to do it what matters is it gets done what matters is it happens and just get off pen and paper because the moment they do that you're going to see a lot more people have better access to Justice and that's what we really care about well I I I cannot agree more and I see the courts and public authorities not only in in the UA in many GCC countries and the Arab countries are developing so much into this direction so the digitizing law in general and automating the processes with courts with prosecution with police departments and um many other departments within the government that is working in the same legal ecosystem are all moving into digital transformation and they're working so much in this 100% can you talk a little bit about HW and tell me what do you do what exactly do you how can I how can I be assisted by H if I'm running a law firm like my Law Firm for example we're people so how can this help me all right so let's put it this way all right if you're running a law firm of 20 people you got more than a few things you need to secure you got to secure your clients you got to secure new clients and keeping the existing ones happy and managing the relationship there so you need a lead generator and a CRM okay you also need a HR platform because if you have 20 people working for you you need some way to organize all the files you need some way to make sure that everyone's doing their job and that's the task management section where if you assign someone a task how do you keep up how do you know if it's got done how do you know where to find the files and emails very bad because if you send internal emails a lot it just gets a lot like really messy really quick right very cluttered because everyone has your email and you got the spam and you get the notifications from Facebook and from login and from whatever it is and that's something else that you need you need a Communications Channel both internally and externally right because you want to communicate with your teams and you want to communicate with people outside your clients perhaps and that's why platforms like slack or Microsoft teams really took off because besides the communications Channel you can also set meetings on them with a calendar that integrates into everything and Microsoft teams especially you have one Drive okay where you can store your files and that's very important because if you have clients they have files and you want to work on contracts and you want to do all these different things right and you want to keep track of your billing and you want to also make sure that you invoice properly and you track your expenses and the entire financials of the firm are under control furthermore maybe you even want to get paid by your clients and the kicker is with AI coming why don't we just make everything 10,000 times faster right I just described 11 different applications 11 different companies but they're not 11 different companies they're hu hu is one application for every single Law Firm for managing partners for the entire team that's super safe super easy to use and super affordable that really integrates all these different aspects into one unique experience that's seamless and helps you as a managing partner generate more money from clients while saving money by running a leaner meaner machine that's what we do that's great yeah we talking about financial control you're talking about uh CRM HR um case management I assume yes task management practice management hearing management litigation management HR management as we said yeah billing finances literally everything but it's also a platform it's a social network for lawyers think of it like it's the LinkedIn for lawyers right every lawyer who uses Haw gets their own platform with their face with their logo with a big contact now a very big about us a very nice section detailing their experiences their areas of practice where they work if they can publish any articles as well you can publish articles on H now right nice and that's where everything comes in together we're really trying to build a legal Community worldwide of lawyers who are in love with tech and who want to use tech for their benefit that must come with a very expensive price no oh yeah very expensive it's completely free because we really believe what do you mean what do you mean for free it's for free oh yeah so it's a freemium model you can start for free okay and you can save for free forever and you can make use of all the features and then if you want extra capacity then we'll take a very meager subscription from you right but you can start and live and enjoy your life using hu for free forever because we really believe that price should never be an issue when it comes to digitization and justice right because we see this as the gateway to better Justice worldwide and if price is an issue then we're we're being kind of hypocritical right if money is is needed to do that we're being kind of hypocritical which is something we don't want to do the GCC is a very affluent area lawyers are very affluent people but I'm not just doing this for the GCC at H we're not just doing it for the affluent lawyers we're doing it for every single lawyer out there for every single person on Earth this is a global platform we're already in 34 countries and we're expanding very rapidly wow so for us it's more of a global Mission it's a humanitarian Mission that's great to hear that's great why are you doing this you studied law I would assume that immediately you get out of this law school you want to go to prosecution you want to be a judge you want to practice law what took you I mean I like Tech as well but I like to lawyer I like to do the the I like the action I love it work but I need to understand what made you shift from going into the practice into just dedicating 100% of your time into the legal Tech because it's worth it and if I don't do it then who's going to do it but yeah having said that there was a very specific moment in time where everything changed for me so you may or may not know this but I also co-founded the lebel on law review yes I know an academic publication you know legal articles 100% And we scaled that really fast as well we went from two writers myself and Isam my co-founder in Lebanon law review and hak Abbas is my co-founder couldn't do it without Abbas in Lebanon LV was killed from two people to 95 people within the span of like a year all right and while we were building up our platform and our reputation I got a very interesting phone call I'm Lebanese right and I was sitting in Beirut and I saw my phone ring picked up the the phone I saw plus 20 that's egyp mhm I answered not knowing who it was and I heard someone crying on the other side of the phone it was a woman and she was crying she told told me her story she was from Alexandria okay Egypt and she called me because she read our articles and she needed a lawyer and I said why are you calling me I'm in a different country Egypt has 600,000 lawyers exactly why why are you calling me why don't you ask your family your friends she can't find them online she can't find them online and her husband is very well connected and it he was being abusive all right and that was the story she was an abused woman with kids and she needed help finding the right lawyer and I always you know obviously I took permission to do so but I always mention her name her name is n so you could say we're doing H because of n because she picked up the phone one day gave me a call and it's like I really need a lawyer because otherwise I can't do this anymore and so I had to help with and theur so I did and that was that right and then things just went on from there that was deceived wow yeah it's inspiring the stories you're telling us right now it's very interesting as well um I want to ask you a question about the challenges throughout the way I mean what you have developed and working in the legal Tech I I know a lot of lawyers who are not using technology maybe not not necessarily in the UAE but outside the UAE I know a lot of lawyers even worldwide not just in in the Arab region in Africa in Europe and in us a lot of lawyers are do not dependent on on on pen and paper as you said I did not think it's 90% honestly but what challenges did you meet with lawyers when you talk to them about legal technology and what challenges did you find throughout the way developing the the the the solution you have I would say you have two main challenges okay the first one is fear fear it's a huge one fear of the unknown fear of not knowing and this is actually the second one not knowing right and they go hand in hand it's fear AI is a big Boogeyman and anything we don't understand we tend to fear lawyers generally are an aging demographic worldwide and the decision makers tend to be older yes right so for them technology is something completely alien it's something completely foreign and it doesn't help that a lot of times it's very difficult to use most interfaces it's very difficult to use technology we are very cautious like we don't don't take such we don't jump into new Solutions or new ideas very quickly we take our time and you know why because you have a responsibility to your clients yes to manage their data and you can't give their data to anyone there has to be a big level of credibility and trust between you and your Tech vendor so you have a lot going on there you have a lot on your shoulders you deal with a lot of people's Secrets your data is highly sensitive yeah it's something you're not necessarily familiar with and you're afraid that it might replace you maybe not you right yeah because you're developing your own AI I'm using it but a lot of other people are very afraid right this fear is unhealthy except in the fact that it generated a lot of curiosity and that's why you're seeing more and more people today embracing legal Tech because of this fear because had there not been a fear the inertia would have just been too high and it's very difficult to fight this in in inertia most lawyers are very affluent they built Villas off of pen and paper you're going to tell them everything you learned was wrong what you've been doing to send your kids to school is wrong what you've been doing to build them let's say business is wrong it's outdated maybe outdated it's a tough pill to swallow yes it's very tough to swallow it takes time yes so it's a shift it takes time but eventually you're going to get there and I think right now is the perfect time because of AI it's quite simple this is the thing I mean using tools I mean pen and paper is a tool 100% the the the car is a tool the whatever typewriter was a tool the thing is if we put the technology uh on the other side of the table and try to compete with it that doesn't work we're going to lose for sure 100% no way to compete can you outrun a car I don't think so I I no no the thing is yes so we need to use these tools we need to make them but just we need to understand how to use it 100% why is it so hard I mean now because because we're not used to being Reliant not in our core competencies it doesn't shake you that a car can outrun you it's normal because you're not a runner yeah but the the difference of speed between you and a Ferrari is exactly the multiplier between you and a legal AI you're going to outrun a Ferrari I don't think so it's not going to happen no lawyer is going I'll be more accurate maybe than the AI That's where the drivers come in right that's why who's behind the driver's seat matters that's why everyone has a Ferrari and a Mercedes and a Formula 1 car but we hold a Formula 1 event every Sunday because there's still competition to to make there's still a lot of deals to close and there's still Fame to be won if you're a lawyer this is just the beginning you went from racing on cam to in the next couple years racing on Ferraris that's a huge shift and if you're not excited for that maybe you weren't so competitive after all right there's a lot for you to uncover there's a lot for you to unpack and there are new RAC trcks to conquer it's the same here you really need to look at Tech as a weapon in your hand you really need to look at Tech as a weapon in your hand not a weapon to your head don't you think there is a gap in the in the in the education like the loss schools itself like there must be a legal tech oh yeah at every yeah bachelor degree 100% but look I mean the schools follow the professions right so for the schools to actually put it in the curriculum you need the professors who are working in the field to use it so it all starts with the profession and honestly what's the exuse excuse not to most tools are free H is is free Char GPT is free all the tools you need are either free or adequately priced so what what's stopping us right I understand there's a big gap in the education system but that's always going to be here and honestly it's not in our control right I love to focus on the things we can control the things we can affect yeah technology is much much much faster than education system and curriculums I I I remember my my my law school days when I uh joined the first year and I had a computer class and I was so much Advanced more than whatever they they are you're probably better than the professor 100% no no maybe not the professor but I was what what I used to learn at the first year of law school to teach me about computer I was much more advanced than what I learned there so it was a bit uh yeah outdated I I think it will always be like that because technology is much faster I agree I agree I agree and the markets are the markets are way faster a lot faster so just hop on the trend you know just hop on the bandwagon embrace the future I attended two conferences you didn't attend you headlined two conferen I I helped as one of the speakers in in two conferences for HW and uh they were in in in Lebanon and the title was one of the most brilliant I ever heard lawyers of Tomorrow law of Tomorrow this bring me to what I want to ask you what did you prepare for the lawyers of Tomorrow how the future looks like of the legal Tech and what you what what do you have for the lawyers I have what they already have but in abundance that's what's prepared nothing new nothing out of the ordinary nothing scary it's what they're used to just more better faster that's the promise of the future that's the promise of Technology the promise is let's not change who we are as legal professionals let's amplify it and that I think is the promise of tech it's really about making sure we get to be who we are and be better at being who we are because if your Tech if your legal Tech whatever it is if you think that's coming to change things I don't think so I think it's just coming to solidify and really build some nice distribution channels make sure you get your message out there faster you can do your work better you connect with everyone all at once and then you build the strong Community the lawyers of tomorrow conference I think was a particular success we had 3,200 people in attendance yeah we had representations official representations from 11 different bar associations we had tens of media Outlets we even had the dead president wink wink you can check out the video for that and one of the things that really made it happen was the title you know all 3,000 almost all 3,000 registered just from the title just from knowing this is an event for the lawyers of tomorrow and there's a reason for that lawyers want Tech they want it they're aware of it now and they want it and they want it to be easy and they want it to be accessible and they want to embrace the future and that's what the spirit is the spirit is lawyers who want to embrace tomorrow while keeping their identity rooted in the tradition of who they are thank you very much yeah and I also think you know when it comes to Technologies we're really preparing some fantastic things for these lawyers when it comes to like really the tech aspect of things we're really working on centralizing everything they need into one place their legal research their Communications their productivity you know them writing a contract their Ai and what really separates our AI from every other AI is our AI is like your mic Ross have you seen suits yes you're going to be Harvey and you're going to have your own mic Ross with you okay and this mic is going to just supercharge you it's going to give you all the data you need it's going to extract it's going to generate it's going to even do tasks on your behalf and that's one of the most important features I really want to talk about if you think you can't use Tech as a lawyer because it's difficult AI will solve it for you because R AI it's so nice it's so helpful you ask it a question you're like hey AI how do I set a meeting it replies with one very simple question do you want me to teach you how to set a meeting or do you want me to do it for you and then if you say do it for me then it actually executes the command that I think is going to really Drive adoption through the roof because once you have that there's really no excuse and it's super easy to navigate and it's exactly like talking to a person and and The person talks back to you and you have a conversation and then you get work done technology for lawyers is meant to make things simpler safer and more productive that's what's in store and I think we're really working hard towards making that a real it great job great job and I thank you so much for coming to Monday legal and I thank you so much for coming to the UAE always talking to you is very inspiring um thank you very much antoan honestly it's a pleasure to be here it's my honor so thank you for having me and I can't wait to see K AI really break through everything else very soon very soon yeah well thank you everybody uh this is your dose for Monday legal see you next week