Law is About to Grow 50x and Most Lawyers Don’t Know It ft. David Cowen

Can legal technology be a catalyst for access to justice while preserving what makes legal work meaningful in the first place? That depends on how you use it. In this episode of Between the Briefs by Steno, hosts Adrian Cea and Joe Stephens sit down with David Cowen, Founder of the Solid Legal Summit and President of the Cowen Group, to explore why the legal industry stands at an unprecedented inflection point, how to cultivate radical curiosity in a rapidly evolving landscape and the strategies top legal professionals are using to thrive amid 10x disruption. This conversation offers expert insights into building meaningful professional connections, asking better questions and positioning yourself at the forefront of legal practice transformation.

What You’ll Learn:

Why the dinner table remains the most powerful predictor of professional success
How to identify and invest in the radically curious 20%
The art of curation as competitive advantage
Why AI will expand, not contract, demand for legal services
How to leverage self-serving altruism to build unbreakable professional networks
Why wrestling with AI (rather than accepting it) is essential for attorneys

Tune in for expert insights on building meaningful professional connections, asking better questions and positioning yourself at the forefront of legal practice transformation.

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction

00:51 From Staffing to Legal Innovation: David’s Career Journey

03:00 The Art of Building Community Through Authentic Connection

12:47 The Dinner Table Question: Understanding Professional Character

21:54 The Strategic Advantage of Connecting the Right People

25:07 Where You Should Invest Your Mentorship

32:42 Vulnerability, AI and the Human Element in Decision-Making

37:40 Making AI Work: Critical Interrogation Over Passive Acceptance

39:56 Reckoning the Pace of Technological Change and Legal Practice

42:06 Why AI Expands Rather Than Contracts Legal Markets

46:42 David’s Hot Take: The Importance of Embracing Professional Mobility

48:35 Key Takeaways & Closing Thoughts

Quotes:

“Legal is who brought me to the dance. There's a character and an integrity in legal professionals; they say what they mean, they mean what they say and they know what they don't know. I'm respected by people that I think are way smarter than I am, and that's a great place to be as a professional.”
"I have a favorite question from my staffing and recruiting days: tell me about your dinner table when you were seven, eight, or nine years old. When you ask people this question, they just unwrap who they are. You find out if it was lonely or family, if it was tough, if they had siblings. You find more in that question than almost any other question you can ask."
"I think it's important to be an informed optimist and not an informed pessimist because we have to figure it out. When I have a conversation with ChatGPT or Claude, I get a dopamine hit because I have the answer, but that's not the same as the feeling of love you have when you connect with somebody.”
“The importance of wrestling with AI is critical. Take questions, get answers back, challenge the AI consciously, take it from ChatGPT to Claude to different platforms, wrestle it down to the ground. I think we've been really accepting of the miracle of the answer at our fingertips, but we need to learn how to challenge AI, not accept anything at face value."
“My hot take is that you couldn't be in a better place at a better time - we are at the beginning of the beginning of next. Your career is a jungle gym, not a ladder, so wherever you've been, there's an entire other side of the jungle gym to explore. Look at history: electricity, cars, railroads, mobile, ecommerce. This is the same story all over again, and the question is, who do you want to be in that story?"