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This is a Momentum Media Production Law Tech Talks discussing technology in Australia's legal profession. Hosted by Lawyers Weekly, guests CJ Ceretto and Ashley Whittaker talk about AI reshaping collaboration in the legal ecosystem. They explore how AI impacts legal delivery, in-house teams, law firms, and alternative legal service providers. The discussion highlights the shift towards more efficient collaboration, shared spaces, and leveraging AI to improve workflows and cost-effectiveness. Legal departments are encouraged to rethink collaboration models by considering cost arbitrage, on-bundling opportunities, involving business users, and optimizing talent allocation. This is a Momentum Media Production Law Tech Talks Discussing all things technology in Australia's legal profession Brought to you by Lawyers Weekly Hello everyone and welcome to a special episode of Law Tech Talks Produced in partnership with our friends at Axiom My name is Jerome Dorosamy I'm coming to you today from Camaraderie Land in Sydney And I'm very pleased to be joined for this conversation by two guests First of all, CJ Ceretto is the Chief Technology Officer of Axiom He is making a second appearance on the show, I believe CJ, welcome back Hi, thanks to see you, Jerome. Thanks for having me And we also have Ashley Whittaker, who is the Country Head in Australia at Harvey This is her first appearance on the show. Hello, Ash Hi, Jerome. Hi, CJ. It's good to see you, bro Today we are going to be discussing how AI is reshaping collaboration Across the legal ecosystem So much to get into in this conversation And as a starting point, CJ, I thought it might be worthwhile Asking you to paint a picture for us As to why this conversation is so critical for us to be having And for the legal profession to be listening to Wow, Jerome, it's putting me on the spot, why don't you? It's a big question I think a lot is happening to transform legal delivery right now A lot of in-house teams see AI as a big superpower They see it as a way to do more in-house That they always would have liked to do in-house before They see it transforming the way they do work And the way that they expect their partners Whether that's law firms or alternative legal service providers Or e-discovery firms to perform work as well And, you know, when you're just rethinking everything Both the work you choose to do and how you get the work done You know, how you collaborate with your colleagues Is also a big topic that is on the mind Especially when you're on bundling work You know, if you would want to do a piece in-house That you used to not be able to But you still need that law firm advice You know, you still need your lower-cost alternative providers in the mix How can you make that as efficient as possible as well? It's just rethink everything While you have the hood open sort of moment And so, CJ, with that in mind And actually, I'll be keen to get your thoughts on this as well But given everything you've just outlined there, CJ You know, what is it that in-house teams are asking for From their providers when it comes to collaboration right now In the face of such, you know, voluminous market and technological change You know, what's top of mind When teams are asking for better collaboration with providers? I think what they're wondering is, hey How's this going to work when we do things a little bit differently? I think that's what's on their mind And I think they're wondering, how do you do this kind of work today? How are you going to use AI in the delivery of this work? How am I going to learn from you when you do that? Maybe you're a few steps ahead of me And what does that mean for this working relationship? I think that's how we're getting to how collaboration might change But I don't think anyone's starting there They're not just coming to the table I don't think and saying that Now, Ashley's probably got a really different Or maybe unique perspective on this Because Hart is an AI company that's invented a new way to collaborate I think you raise a really interesting point there, CJ And that shift where we are at currently In terms of how we're thinking about legal teams From an in-house perspective And our outside counsel working together Is definitely where we are at this year in 2026 So I think, you know, we were looking back 12 or 24 months ago And the conversation was more around What is AI bringing to the work we do individually day to day? Very task specific And you're right That conversation is starting to edge now more towards If we now have AI that permeates most of the tasks that we do What is the value that you're delivering as a law firm to the in-house team? And is that going to shift the way that legal services are delivered? I think it's that shift How legal services are being delivered That really is at the interplay this year To your point, CJ The evolution of shared spaces within Harvey Does actually change AI From being that point-and-click Task engagement To a new operating system You know, we're fundamentally transforming The ability to engage and collaborate in legal And so, Ashley, following on from that You know, with that movement away From some of the traditional legal workflows Are there ways in which those sort of old ways of doing things Are making collaboration more difficult at this point? I think it's a really good question In the sense that if we actually go back to how we did And still do collaborate today Really, we're talking about a combination of fragmented tools You know, there might be a letter of instruction that goes out via email A little bit of back-and-forth over an email chain There might be some engagement on Microsoft Teams You'd usually have a few status calls And then, you know, follow-up meetings And really, the whole legal work is getting done on different computers Totally fragmented And then we engage separately on those mediums In terms of whether we're on the right track Is there anything we're missing? Is the client happy with the work product output? And in the end, we produce something You know, we either produce an advice memo Or in the litigation context That might be the final pleading ready to file Or the defense Does that create difficulties in the world of AI? I don't know that it necessarily creates difficulties But I do think that AI opens up a new way to do this better And what I mean by that is And I know we'll jump into this separately But when we think about shared spaces within Harvey You now have essentially a pane of glass The work that I might be doing As a lawyer at the outside counsel firm CJ can now actively engage with As potentially that in-house counsel To review the work, comment on it in real time And actually leverage the AI that my firm is building and using To his immediate benefit CJ, what's your take on all that? I mean, a couple of things come to mind One is I see Maybe I'll step back and just sort of tell a story About how this often works for people today, right? Buyers of legal services are used to I send a matter to my firm And then later when I need access To some of the documents or the assets That were created as part of that matter I go and I log into my firm's document management system They've given me access to a portal I can go get some of the artifacts That have been published and shared with me And that's what state-of-the-art Still mostly has looked like For most folks who are engaging with large firms And just as a consumer, even if you're a matter You don't necessarily own all of the artifacts They're not just magically there For you to reference in the future And so if you have shared spaces Shared collaborative storage And AI artifact generation, workflow sharing Now you can start to leverage knowledge across matters In a really different way Hey, when we did that, you know, diligence a few years ago You know, maybe now past the integration period We're now thinking about diligencing a similar company What were the concerns that we checked for there? Can you remind me what some of the gotchas were? Could we just apply that analysis framework To this new transaction? Can I think across previous transactions? And then we start to imagine Well, if I have this shared space Where I'm working with my provider Can I invite other providers To do different pieces of the matter as well? And I think that opens up a lot of cost arbitrage Sending the right work to the right caliber of firm And the right talent for the right moment So there's a lot of really exciting things That can happen there Yeah, so CJ, following on from that then As legal departments start to rethink Some of these collaboration models What do you think that they need to be looking out for? Definitely ask yourself the question Am I just sending a matter to one shop for convenience? I think that has often been the case, right? You know, you send a diligence matter out You might send it out You might send it to only the firm That's going to manage the entire merger And the acquisition and the integration All the way through That's not the most cost-effective way To handle all the different aspects But it was the most efficient way To handle the workflow before And now if you have control of all of the assets You can bring yourself in to the thought process earlier You can bring lower-cost providers in To do some of the large document review and analysis You can bring in your really expensive Bet the business partners to look at that And advise on the results Instead of using maybe $1,500 an hour associates To do that analysis When you could be using $300, $400 an hour Very senior attorneys to do that analysis Through an alternative method So a lot of cost arbitrage Open up on bundling opportunities Come up there too And, you know, Ashley really opened my eyes on this Last week I think, you know, there was this discussion about Well, hey, is it just for the lawyers Who are collaborating? Or maybe do we start to get Some of the business users Involved in this process? Yeah, I think it's a really interesting point there, CJ Around we talk about collaboration Being, you know, the outside law firm Collaborating with the in-house team Or their enterprise client But a really interesting trend that we've seen Since we enabled Shared Spaces is exactly to CJ's point How do we think about that in-house team Now changing the way that it interfaces with its clients For the stakeholders across the business And we're seeing some really, really exciting use cases That are starting to come up You know, thinking about using those Shared Spaces Which are now, again, to CJ's point Hyper-context aware So historically, you know, that fragmented way of collaborating Whether with outside counsel or your own internal team Context was the casualty We would lose a lot without being able to surface everything And every decision that was going into the work We were producing Now you can see in-house teams thinking through Can Shared Spaces be that legal help desk for my team You know, like a concrete example might be something Like building out templates within your Shared Space For every single policy that we have within the business And now HR or employment can self-serve To identify how to answer certain questions Or honestly, like a real low-hanging fruit That we hear a lot of the time, NDA self-serve How do we get our sales, BD, procurement teams To run an in-house team approved playbook Or potentially one they've built In collaboration with their external law firm And now they can, you know, move that process through In a bottleneck and say no when there's an escalation point So they're flagged when you need to send things To legal or finance But it's not going every single time through that team Guys, I want to ask about Shared Spaces What's the importance of this, you know, at a time When there's so much shatter around legal AI? Yeah, I might even just set the scene I know we've said the word Shared Space a few times on this call But it might actually be really helpful To explain what is Shared Space Yeah, please I think critically what it's not is a new AI feature You know, over the last few years We've had a lot of AI tools and features Including within Harvey that have come out Which are really great, again, for that very specific task But Shared Spaces is about opening up And I like the way CJ talks about this Really a context-aware system for a matter So very matter-specific And within that Shared Space I can upload data to that matter So it might be my precedents It might be the relevant regs or legislation And the prior work product I can also upload AI tools So now within this one space or, you know, a physical A virtual room I also have the ability to run workflows, playbooks And potentially within Harvey we call them review tables The ability to extract insights at scale In addition to the tools and that data I can also produce or co-produce in that space AI artifacts So that might be the policy, the pleading, the report And co-edit those within that space So that's sort of essentially the ability to be inside a space And do the legal work And then critically overlaying that Or actually at the foundation Is governance, auditability, permissions and access control And the reason that is important Is that the individual that's opening the space Needs to ensure that anyone they invite in So to CJ's point, whether that is an external advisor In the litigation context in Australia That might be a barrister As well as the client As well as potentially an expert I need to be able to choose who Enters that room or enters that space And see the work product So I have full permissions To be able to enable review access So just view the information in there Edit and run, run only I might be able to run a particular AI workflow But not actually see what's behind the hood And again, every individual that enters that space Might have different levels of access So the barrister might just be able to see The final list of authorities and the pleading The client may only be able to see the final report Whereas my legal team that's actively working on that Likely has full access and edits capabilities So with all of that in mind Are you guys able to point to any case studies Or best practice When it comes to extracting the full value of shared spaces Yeah, I can definitely take that And CJ, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this as well I think there's two sorts of points to your question One, what are firms already built? So like what are some actual concrete examples Of the types of items that they're pushing through By shared spaces And two, relatedly How are they rethinking these revenue models? So why are we doing this? And what does that new way of delivering legal services mean For the revenue relationship? So I can think of a few different examples here We have a global law firm That built, I think, at something around 25 Custom diligence workflows within a space For a particular private equity client And those workflows essentially cover their full deal cycle From start to finish By enabling that within the context of where Shared space, the client was able to run The relevant workflows at each stage of that deal cycle And then flipping that again To a totally different type of use case We also have a labour and employment HR team And they essentially built over a dozen workflows For HR for a global retailer client This is the law firm, HR specialist Building this for their retail client And that included things like Workflows for offer letters, PIPs, performance plans And termination checklists Now all of that became self-serve So that their client was able to run those workflows And extract the insights automatically And, you know, offline They didn't have to wait for the email Now that's all great to be able to do that But then I guess, you know, how do we think about that? How, if we're now self-serving And individuals can run this What does that mean for the law firm? Are they just given away the work? And this is really where we see We're at the early stages of law firms Starting to have the conversation with their clients About how do we change the way we deliver these services? And it is a conversation But we are starting to see the early signs Of law firms looking into new subscription Of fixed fee type models That might be, for example, you know, a fund subscription For workflows relating to fund formation Or it could be I've built out a deals benchmark flow And I'm going to be able to license Every time you run that flow And that really comes back to my earlier point That within these shared spaces You have full auditability So I can see how often things are run Who's running them And what they're doing with that following CJ, let's bring you back in here And yeah, if you've got any case studies To point to as well, that would be awesome But I'm curious to know also, you know, why All of this collaboration Between, you know, the in-house counsel And then their external providers Their service providers I mean, why it all matters So Jerome, maybe I'll be a little bit selfish In my answer Axiom has been for 26 years now Trying to help our clients Or exclusively in-house legal departments Figure out how to just reimagine The way that they do work And we think about this topic all the time How do you change the way you've always done it To be more efficient To get better outcomes To get a better, quite frankly Outcome for price ratio We worry about that all the time And we know that the vast majority of work That clients send out to law firms Is what we would categorize as Non-extraordinary legal work It's work that the in-house team would do If it could But it doesn't have the capacity The expertise to do it And so the only way that it's always had To get that type of work done Is to send that work out to a firm And to pay the premium for the work That didn't need to go to the firm Going to the firm So we see technology like Harvey's Share Spaces As a way to finally unbundle some of that work So that only the parts that need to go To the law firm Are actually going to the law firm And the rest of the work is either Being actually unbundled to the in-house team Or being unbundled to Flexible providers like Axiom Who we just consider to be part of The in-house team So on the purely selfish dimension And when I say selfish I mean selfish for the in-house departments Just in general I see it as a great way To unbundle matters When the firm is involved And then also to share matters across firms So that work doesn't get repeated When it doesn't need to I think that's like a common thing That happens a lot So now having said that The use case that I'm probably The most excited about When we talk about unbundling Is diligence Which I know I talked about quite a bit But many times There's tons of review that's needed Ahead of an acquisition And all of that knowledge and information Is actually needed for the integration phase In order for the integration To be really successful You need all that analysis You need that Fingertips You need to understand Why the specific decisions That were taken Were taken and why And it's even better If you actually have access To the workflows So that you can rerun them Or modify pieces of the analysis So that you can just continue To enhance that picture That you gain As the acquisition actually closes And you really are dealing With the real matter of integration So that's the use case Perhaps I'm most excited about For unbundling of work On the maybe Imagine how to do things Completely differently perspective I think that's where Ashley's idea of using shared spaces To actually bring the in-house clients The actual business users in And treat them like clients Of the in-house department That's pretty wild I mean what Ashley was mentioning Was having NDAs Potentially run by the robots Well how do you teach the AI What our standards are For my legal department At my company How do I teach it What my standards are Not just any off the shelf standards And then well you know We spent the last two years Coming to terms with AI And figuring out how to do Exactly that with tools like Harvey Where you really can Customize your own playbook And get really comfortable With the AI running that analysis On its own Well once as an in-house attorney You're comfortable It only takes a few minutes of your time And you trust the machine's reasoning Why not publish it Why not take that risk Because the efficiency gain Is astronomical Especially if you trust The robot's decision making authority To say hey There's a little too much ink On the page here This really does need to go To an in-house team member That's crazy I think we're going to see NDAs And then we're going to see MSAs And statements of work And sales order forms Everything's going to take that path It's just a matter of Making your AI yours Which you know You got to teach it how to be you No certainly That leads me nicely into asking About where Axiom fits in If clients want to move From AI experimentation To real workflow adoption Where does Axiom fit in that equation Yeah we have a number of folks At the company Who spent a lot of time Trying to think about What this transformation looks like For our clients We've done a lot of experimentation With our clients Deploying AI tools Into Axiom engagements At clients And measuring the return Seeing the value And in the process A lot of our clients have said Hey can you teach us how to do that Can you leave this configuration behind So this doesn't disappear When you guys end your engagement And we've found our way To just lean in there And say absolutely yes And in the process We've come to maybe two conclusions One when you start to configure AI With your in-house playbooks They are uniquely yours Your standards Your processes Your workflows They're different Every single client That we interact with We end up building And maintaining something Completely different That is bespoke to The way they do their business And helps us for every future client Make that process Of implementing their standards And their chosen AI Even faster Because there's a lot of Common non-AI pieces And we've just sort of seen So many versions of this This story That we know What's going to be common And what's not The other thing we've learned Is that When it comes to adopting the tools It's one thing to configure the tools And then you need to get everybody To actually change the way They do work within the department And you're going to have a couple of people Raising their hands Who are really excited Who are going to adopt it like crazy And you're going to have a large group That is maybe not so interested Or doesn't have that much time To change the thinking About how they do their work We've actually learned That Maybe to bring a software term Across a pair programming Is the way Taking an attorney Who has really understood the technology And knows how to apply it And sitting them side by side With the in-house attorney Who's actually doing real work And doing it together in the AI And it's that live One-to-one skills transfer Where privilege and confidentiality Are fully protected That's how we see people really changing The way that they go through The adoption curve Hopefully that answers the question Ashley, I know you have a whole CX team That spends a bunch of time Onboarding clients to Harvey Am I just crazy with my lawyers Teaching lawyers thing Or do you buy into that? No, I think the social engineering And social proof is so critical Because all of these new ways of working Do require a mindset shift Even for myself as a former practitioner Having to think through That I'm not reaching for email necessarily And doing my work in an entirely new way Requires me to actively engage in the process Until it becomes natural And CJ, to your point This is really that broader conversation Around the new roles that are opening up in legal Legal engineers, we have them in-house And we're starting to see a lot of our customers Actually create roles around champions Or legal engineers as well As they start to think about How do they pair subject matter expertise With expertise within Harvey and the AI system So very similar to the axiom lawyers That you're speaking to That bring their deep domain expertise And pair that with their knowledge of Harvey And how they can deploy that To the relevant client I think it's really powerful A little anecdote that I actually really like When I'm thinking about an in-house team I was working with recently There was a senior lawyer at a bank And she'd been using Harvey And she sort of jumped into it a few times And then let it go And went back to her normal ways of working And then all of a sudden a month later Her statistics showed that she was a power user So we reached out to her And we said, hey Another group within your company Is actually going to start Their first testing of Harvey Do you want to go and speak to them About your experience And why you changed From being sort of a casual user To a power user And honestly the advice she gave to that group Has really resonated with me And she said like any tool If you jump in and then jump back out You're never going to learn A new way of doing things And then I started hearing around the office Have you asked Harvey? Have you asked Harvey? And I thought I must be missing something So I went back and gave myself a challenge And I said I'm going to spend the next two weeks Putting every piece of my work through Harvey No matter what friction points I find That don't feel natural And she said it was fascinating Like any new habit I got to the end of those two weeks And now I don't know how to unpick that work I don't know how to go back To the old way of doing things Because I see where every part of my role Can leverage AI in different ways So I think that's such a great piece of advice For anyone thinking through How do they bring their expertise No matter what that is Into AI enabled systems Do it Spend the time actually testing it out So guys I just have one more question For you both then And actually I'll put it to you first Reflecting on everything we've been discussing So far in this conversation How do you think in-house teams Need to be thinking about the balance Between AI, human judgment And also the support that they'll get From service providers And what does all of that suggest About future legal operating models Yeah I mean I everyday have conversations With both sides of the fence You know the in-house teams That are thinking about How do we deploy legal AI And the law firms that are actively using the AI And starting to enable access to that To their clients And I do think we're at a year of transformation And there will be a significant shift In the way that we engage and collaborate In legal moving forward And the biggest piece of advice That I can give and do give Is to bring everyone under the same tent Don't have the conversation in isolation Bring your in-house team And your law firm together And have that conversation Because these are new ways Of delivering legal services How does the in-house team Want to receive that service How is the law firm Thinking about embedding their expertise To help their clients Once we've delivered services in that way How do we think about those new revenue models That may or may not be appropriate For the particular task at hand So we're at the point of a huge conversation I think needs to happen And that doesn't happen in isolation We will figure out What this next stage of collaboration and revenue Looks like By having that as an ongoing conversation Awesome And CJ I think that AI represents a shift That is a massive technological change I don't think we can underclub The impact that this change is having And will have On the way that we do work On our society All of these things For what? Three years post Chad GPT And I think we're going to measure In that sort of dimension for a little while And I think in my lifetime I might only see two of these On the internet So I will see AI And unless AI figures out How to make me immortal I'm not so sure I'm going to get to see something This transformational again So it's really hard To put a crystal ball out there And say Oh yeah I know the right Combination of things To tell any of your listeners right now But I do think That what Ashley said is right That we have to come together And ask ourselves How are we going to work differently In this moment And how are How am I going to get to do things That I couldn't do before Because I have these new superpowers How's that going to change our relationship And that's a conversation That Axiom really welcomes With our clients Especially on this topic Because we believe We can just learn so much From one another Through conversations Exactly like that We've at Axiom Figured out From all of our many engagements With our clients How we can use AI For their benefit And now our question is Well how can we deliver that with you In a way that you're comfortable with It does change The way that we interact a little bit It's starting to seep into the way That we charge for service a little bit Like Ashley was describing And I think the most important bit There is just that We all look at each other And we say hey well we're taking this We're taking this step together At the speed that we're both We're both comfortable reimagining it But I do think we're all going to look back On this podcast in two years And say oh yeah we were really naive And then so much is going to change Between now and then That it's just going to seem It's going to seem like night and day That would be my guess Well we'll get you back in two years And we'll see how much has indeed changed And CJ for those listening Who want to maybe continue this conversation With Axiom Or if they want to learn more about Axiom And its offerings How can they get in touch Absolutely You can go to axiom.com And click contact us Also Jacob Who is our country head in Australia Jacob Flax Will be happy to take Anybody's LinkedIn request I'm sure he'd love to follow up with you On that dimension Any way you want to go about it We're happy to talk to you CJ Sordo Thank you so much for your time Thank you Jerome And Ashley Whitaker Thank you so much for your time Thank you so much It was a great conversation Thank you very much to Axiom For its ongoing support of Lawyers Weekly Thank you to the listener for tuning in We hope you enjoyed this episode See you again next time This podcast is produced for educational purposes To give you general information And a general understanding of the law And should not be considered legal advice Any advice is general in nature And does not take into account Your objective, situation or needs Because of that You should seek professional legal advice Before acting on any of the content