Episode 002: Legal Innovation from the Inside - One Lawyer’s Leap into Startup Life

Summary

In this episode of Straight Goods, hosts Lea Lavoie and Dominic Kingston sit down with Jean-Philippe (JP) Couteau, a rare breed of legal professional: lawyer, founder, and tech innovator. After years of practicing law at top-tier firms and building a corporate law department inside a Big Four, JP realized the legal world was still stuck in the analogue era relying on binders, manual processes, and legacy systems. So he launched Ingenio, a legal tech startup designed to digitize and streamline corporate law for the modern era.

JP shares what it’s like to bootstrap a startup while still practicing law, the challenges of building cross-functional teams between legal and tech, and why AI has both incredible potential and real risks in the legal industry. From tips on how law firms can adapt to automation, to stories about fax machines, regulatory barriers, and productizing legal services, JP offers a clear-eyed and inspiring look at what the next generation of law might look like and how entrepreneurs can help lead the charge.

Transcript

Dominic Kingston: 0:00

Hi, I'm Dominic Kingston.

Lea Lavoie: 0:01

And I'm Lea Lavoie.

Dominic Kingston: 0:02

Welcome to the Straight Goods Podcast.

Lea Lavoie: 0:04

So today we had the pleasure of talking to Jean-Philippe Couteau. Jean-philippe is a founder, a CEO and a lawyer, which is not a combination that we hear super often. Lawyers are risk-averse, structured, credential-driven all things that don't usually apply to entrepreneurs. Starting his career in 2007 at the Tax Credit of Canada, jp's law career has included experience with both Large national law firm and a big four professional firm, where he started their corporate law practice. When we think of lawyers, we think of people with a lot of free time and creative ideas. No, we don't. So it's going to be really interesting to talk to JP today and learn more about how he went from being a lawyer to also being an entrepreneur.

Dominic Kingston: 0:44

JP. Welcome to the show. Thank you.

Lea Lavoie: 0:46

How are you doing today? Jp?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 0:48

Very good.

Lea Lavoie: 0:48

Very good. So I have a good little warm-up question for you, just to get us comfortable on the mic. So what's an innovation in the legal field that excites you right now?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 0:57

Probably the AI, but not just like. Most people understand AI to be like open AI and what's going on there. But I think you know there's all these models coming out that are more specialized towards, like you know, professionals, legals, more accurate answers. I think this is definitely something that's going to change the industry and augment the ability of lawyers to deliver legal services.

Lea Lavoie: 1:20

How do you use AI in your law practice? Because, obviously, law is very structured, very specific. There's no margin for error. So do you use any AI tools when it comes to being a lawyer?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 1:29

Yeah, I do. I think you have to be careful with client data. So there's restrictions there. That's the first thing, I think. The second thing is you have to be careful because the AI sometimes has a side to it where it invent things, like it has a creative side to it. So I mean, as you can imagine as a lawyer, the worst thing that can happen to you is that the AI invents something, but you can use it. For example, if you're drafting letters. You know, back in the day you would go to a legal assistant and say I want to send a letter to such and such person and he needs to say ballpark this, now you can use AI. And the say ballpark this, now you can use AI.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 2:06

And the key is really to understand how to prompt the AI. I would say anyone who wants to learn about AI, the first thing you should learn is how to correctly and effectively prompt the machine. So it's very important how you ask your questions. So this is one example. If you need summarized data, for example, or example or a nice little infographic, there's an application that I use whenever I want to do a presentation. I do an outline of my presentation and I throw that in there and then it just builds a presentation with my slide formatting and had pictures, infographics and things like that. So that saves a lot of time potentially.

Lea Lavoie: 2:44

So not as much for, like, idea generation, but more so as a tool to help you with your ideas, the thoughts that you have, and then just to polish this off Exactly.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 2:50

Yeah, exactly, you have to be careful whenever you're querying it with you know legal, substantive knowledge, like, for example, case law or anything like that. I know there's a lot of people who use it to summarize cases. But there's a lot of people who use it to summarize cases, but I think it comes with a certain level of risk, unless you absolutely know exactly what the case says. I think you absolutely have to go read the case, no matter what.

Lea Lavoie: 3:12

When did you want to be a lawyer? Were you a little kid and be like I want to be a lawyer, I want to practice law, or is?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 3:19

that something that came up later? Yeah, I think I always. Like you know, I was always intrigued by the law and I remember I did my undergrad in business finance and at the time I looked up and I had done some courses in tax and I was like, ok, tax is an interesting area of law, a little bit nerdy but interesting. So this is how I all started and I went into law and I was always genuinely curious about law in general. Like you know, there's areas I would never practice, but it doesn't mean that I don't have an interest and I'm not curious about what's going on. Like, for example, criminal I would never practice in criminal law but I'm always curious. Like I was at a conference last weekend and some presentation had like a little bit more of a criminal constitutional law flavor and I always thought this is interesting.

Lea Lavoie: 4:05

Yeah, so there's like that flexibility in law too, right it's? Not like you study law and you have to be a tax lawyer. You can kind of just go and shift between practices, right?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 4:12

Exactly, I mean law. I always say what you learn in law school is essentially you just learn how to think as like a lawyer. You don't know much, you don't have a lot of substantive knowledge. And you don't know much, you don't have a lot of substantive knowledge. And then you start your articling and you know before, like if you practice in a large firm and article, you're probably looking at five, seven years to become a partner. But that period that you know associate period is always I always call it like as a learning. It's a little bit the equivalent of doctors with residency. These are the years where you learn your skills. You learn the substantive knowledge, but also you learn how. You know how to act like as a lawyer and you know push the methodology even further.

Lea Lavoie: 4:52

So you're not only a lawyer, you're also an entrepreneur. So have you always known that law wasn't just going to be it for you, that you wanted also another career, or is this something that you found a bit later on in your life? And if so, what was that moment where you're like, oh, law's great, but I kind of want more?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 5:08

Yeah, I think I was always intrigued as a lawyer practicing in business, like corporate and tax, you always meet entrepreneurs that are buying or selling businesses and I was always curious about their story and talk with them. And at one point I was like, okay, maybe I would like that. But then it's like, okay, but what? And I think at the same time, you know, I had reached a point where I had done a certain number of years in law, like 10, 12 years and I was like, okay, the next 10 or 12 will likely look like the last 10 or 12. And then at the time I had discovered innovation in law which kept really my interest, like in technology, innovation in law. So I think today I'm still practicing law because of the tech, the mix of law and tech and tech keeps everything fresh and moving forward. But I think if I was, you know, the first 12 years of my career the second 12 years of my career were like the first 12. Probably I would have got off the wagon at one point.

Lea Lavoie: 6:08

Yeah, you like change, you like learning new things right and adapting.

Dominic Kingston: 6:11

Keeping things fresh and yeah, yeah, so in law like so you're talking about technology? How, what's the propensity for law firms to adopt and evolve the technology, especially as technology is moving ever so much faster?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 6:23

Yeah, the technology, especially as technology is moving ever so much faster. Yeah, I think it's. You know, I always say legal technology. Right now is probably where fintech, like the bank and the financial industry technology was 15 years ago To zap the line.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 6:41

There's a few companies that are doing it, but really we're not pushing things very far. There is some innovation, but it's not like this is not hurt shattering Like. This is not like part of it is due to the regulatory environment. But my approach to the regulatory environment has always been if you really want to innovate, you know, yes, the regulatory environment will sometimes complicate things, but there's always ways, you know, to achieve what the regulations are there for while innovating. For example, we have regulations lawyers in Canada, data needs to be resident in Canada, saved in Canada on server in Canada. Well, with cloud now, all the big providers have facilities in Canada, so there's always ways to manage regulation and to respect the spirit of the law or the spirit of their regulations.

Dominic Kingston: 7:27

Would law firms be disrupted by innovation or is there a chance? Is there an opportunity for a business called a law firm to disrupt the industry using tech?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 7:36

I think law firms are somewhat disrupted and I think they, I think you're only, as as a law firm, as innovative as your least innovative person in the firm. So the guy in the corner.

Dominic Kingston: 7:49

Yeah, the guy in the corner who you know just started using.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 7:53

You know his email. I'm joking about that, but you know law firms still use faxes Like it's interesting.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 8:00

Early in my career I was in a big national law firm and I went to a big accounting firm like a professional firm, one of the big four, and I remember when we first asked for a fax they were looking at us as if we were coming from a different planet. But you know it was still very commonly and used to have a fax. And if you talk with the younger generation they would even know in those firms they would even know what a fax is with the younger generation.

Lea Lavoie: 8:24

they wouldn't even know in those firms, they wouldn't even know what it was.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 8:26

I've never faxed anything in my life, but yeah, so it's still very prominent.

Lea Lavoie: 8:33

So obviously you're the founder of Ingenua and you're also the CEO, but before getting into that, did you have any other business ideas or business ventures that you explored before actually sticking to Ingenua?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 8:42

Yeah, a ton of business idea. I think the mistake I did is I was trying, you know, at one point, with friends and potential partners or people that I wanted to do business, we were looking at, you know, different businesses to purchase that had nothing to do with law or my knowledge or my training. We look at car washes. We look at, you know, a business like a distributor business, a fairly large distributing business. We look at different things. But I think at the end of the day, I think sort of light went off really when I started Ingenio around. Yeah.

Lea Lavoie: 9:19

So when did that idea come about for Ingenio? What was the moment where you're like this isn't working as a lawyer. We need a solution for this, and there's nothing out there that's meeting my needs.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 9:28

Yeah, so I think I think it came gradually, but I think essentially I was with large national law firm. I went to the large professional firm and we had a pretty defined plan and at the center of it there was a software and then we were for 18 months. We tried to get it approved by the big four's IT security team and would not get it approved then. So we started looking around.

Dominic Kingston: 9:51

What was the software at that time? What was it going to do?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 9:53

It was called ALF. It's still around. It's still like a workhorse. It was a good software, but it was 30, 35 years old. So I mean IT security. You know, before the internet was different than it is now. So it's you know. So we that's how we essentially started started looking around, then try to find startup.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 10:13

The problem was always I've always seen the value of closely aligning technology with law, and it's very difficult to find lawyers who are, you know, computer science major or have an understanding of tech Very difficult to match these things very closely to make the product even more relevant. And you know, when I was at Big Four, I remember looking my colleagues on the accounting side. They had, you know, tax software for due tax returns and you'd punch all the numbers and at the end they would say, oh, you have an opportunity here to save money. If you do this instead of that, you're going to save $100. And I was like, why don't we have anything like this as a lawyer? Why don't we have anything that prevents us from making mistakes?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 11:02

Because mistakes, at the end of the day, as a lawyer, your commodity is your time, so you sell your time. You can't sell your time doing mistakes. Mistakes are costly. So how do we reduce mistakes? And then at the same time we have the demographic problems. Like 20% of the workforce in Canada is between 55 and 65. So that means over the next 10 years they're going to retire. If you had immigration, even a high, very high level, and young people coming into the market, you're not filling those jobs. Now we're talking a little bit less of that because of AI but I think it will be still an issue.

Lea Lavoie: 11:44

Yeah you still need to be more efficient with fewer people.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 11:47

And not restressing your staff, like there's such huge waste, not just financial waste, but like sometimes really good relationship with a client, but then you do something by mistake not of your fault, but due to a series of things that you know system failure and then you lose face in front of the client and then it forces the client to ask himself well, if they fail at doing this very simple thing, what does tell me? What does it tell me about the very complicated thing and um and, and this was this. This is always an issue like lawyers, we sell trust. You know people trust lawyers. It's one of the most important commodity of lawyers.

Dominic Kingston: 12:29

So, in general today, what's the vision behind the business and then the software that you're building?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 12:33

Yeah. So we looked around and we like, okay, we can't find the software. So initially we tried to work with other companies and it was just not going in the direction that we wanted. So I thought at one point I was like, well, maybe I'll have to do it. And I was very naive. I thought it would take six months, probably spent, you know, one 15th of what we've spent so far. And then you know all would be good. But I think it's a lot more complicated it's. You know, starting a business or building a team from scratch is always complicated. It takes at least 18 months before you have a certain stability, a certain culture, people all pushing in the same direction, understanding the mission, the vision and what you're trying to accomplish. And then marrying legal with tech is very hard because you know you have tech people that don't understand legal and you have legal people that don't understand tech.

Dominic Kingston: 13:30

And you're trying to find. So are you the translator between the two groups? Is that, was that?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 13:34

No, I think I've learned. I mean, I've learned enough on the tech side to be dangerous. I joke about that, but like I don't. I've learned to code, but I don't code. Like but I think I've learned to code, but I don't code. But I think I've made a serious effort through courses, online courses, readings and all of this, to understand them. But I think a lot of them too, like some of the devs that we have or business analysts, could be a very good paralegal or a junior lawyer in a law firm by now.

Dominic Kingston: 14:05

So it's just taking that length of time for both teams, in a sense that they're in the other part of the business, that they're in.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 14:12

Yeah, I think there's a huge value intellectual property in doing that, like making sure that there's this closeness between the two.

Lea Lavoie: 14:20

And how was it building a business while still practicing law? When you started in Genio, were you still working 40 plus hours a week as a lawyer, doing it on your own in the evenings, or did you have someone else you were working with while you were building it? Like, how did you manage?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 14:38

Because have someone else you were working with while you were building it, like, how did you manage? Because it's hard enough to build a business. It's even harder when you're still working. Yeah, time and and for me, like, it's all been self-funded. So, um, it was really hard to you know, just can't stop. You can't stop working like you gotta, because you got the payroll to do at the end of the month and uh, and you know, sometimes you doubt yourself. You You're just like, okay, we'd said it was going to cost X and now we're five times that. But if we stop, it's worth nothing, we've lost, it's a pure loss. And then you know you start getting clients and clients are making comments and giving you really good feedback. So we'd be like, okay, let's, let's keep pushing.

Dominic Kingston: 15:11

So how long has the journey been today?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 15:12

So the business officially started January 2019. So for the first nine months I was still like at a big four. And you know, eventually, because I had a notice period and to withdraw from the partnership there, so later, in the fall of 2019, I essentially went on my own.

Dominic Kingston: 15:34

So I've been for a long time yeah.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 15:37

So essentially practicing law and doing that at the same time.

Lea Lavoie: 15:41

What was the reaction to the people in your life when you were like I'm going to start my own business? Were your lawyer friends like, oh, why would you do that? You're going from something that's so certain to something that's completely new. How did your partner react? How did your family react? Completely new, how did your partner react?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 15:53

How did your family react? I think my partner was supportive because of you know she had seen my frustration with you know. You know the old school way of practicing law, the lack of sort of innovation and things like that, and the traditional model law firm. I think I mean, in fairness, I think a lot of it has changed now. I think COVID has sort of shake things up there. If you go in modern law firm a lot has changed but it's still you know. You know there's a huge difference between the work culture at Shopify versus any you know seven sister law firm in Toronto. So I think you know smaller regional firm. I think I've done really well, or doing really well because they adapt faster to sort of pace of change. So I think, short answer, I think my partner was really supportive. I think some colleagues it's funny they still don't completely understand it.

Dominic Kingston: 16:54

They're crazy. What are you doing?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 16:56

Because, being an entrepreneur, you know you have to accept that. You know if finances are tight one month you're not doing payroll, you're still doing payroll, but it's your pay that comes off, it's your investment that you liquidate to pay for certain things. So I think that comes with the series as an entrepreneur and you don't make the money that you were making as a full-time lawyer before.

Dominic Kingston: 17:20

Did you expect that when you started the business? Oh yeah, you kind of went in wide open yeah.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 17:26

So really interesting. But I think I agree, like I would say, some colleagues, former colleagues still don't get it, but I think I'm very encouraged. Sometimes I talk with I do a demo for our software because I still do a lot of the demos. I do a demo for our software with the law firm and you know, recently someone said why don't you guys build more for lawyers? Because this is really relevant for us and that makes you know, that tells me that we've done something right by matching that the law and the tech expertise together, bridging that gap.

Lea Lavoie: 18:01

So that's very encouraging to hear that validation.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 18:05

But at the same time, there's challenges all the time, like I think you know. Going from paper, like what we do, essentially, we take binders. The data is very analog, it's in binders and we're bringing it into the digital world, so there's challenges associated with this. It's very custom. Each lawyer does things a little bit differently. There's good and bad practices. There is history. Like some of the firms that we work with are over 100 years old.

Dominic Kingston: 18:34

There is history, like some of the firms that we work with are over 100 years old, and so since you've started, all of the AIs come out and it's sort of changed let's say everything. So how has your business changed since chat came on the scene and there's more models now than you can count. So how has that impacted the business, from both the vision where you're going point of view and just sort of your build? Do you have tech debt and what does that look like?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 18:55

look like yeah, I think we've always tried to be nimble. I think the ai forces us to be nimble because I think if you want to stay relevant, it can't be just camp on one set of technology, otherwise you're going to quickly become irrelevant. So I think what we've tried to do is we're trying to become like an app that is multi-model, um, but it all come with challenges, because I mean for us, for example, privacy and data residency we cannot use some of the model, like deep seek, we can't use, you know us models and we have obligation there um and also um security, uh certification.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 19:32

So we got security certification last year, so every year we have to maintain it. So we got to be really careful whenever we bring in new technology. We got to be really careful about data residency, about. You know what's the model Like in AI. The risk is you want to be able to process the data, but you do not like it has to be a one-way street. You're using it, but they're not using your data to train the model. So that's the big risk for law firms.

Dominic Kingston: 19:59

So we do sort of full round of testing to ensure that and and then from that you know most law firms are built by the hour. That's sort of the business model. How do you see your tech and tech in general changing that business model, a business model and like, and how would law firms make money in the future? If it's, if ai helps lawyers do more faster, yeah, either they have to do more or they're going to make less money because they're doing things faster no, I think.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 20:25

I think there's definitely like um. When I was at the big four, they had an expression for this. There was productivization of services, so you take a service, you turn it into a product and sell it to a client. I think law firms are trying slowly to do this, but I think they're probably 10, 12 years behind other professions.

Dominic Kingston: 20:45

So you'd buy it at a fixed price, exactly For an output.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 20:48

And you should know, as a professional, you should know, provided that you have set some boundaries, you should know exactly how much things cost. If, after 10, you know not even 10 years, but five, six years of practice, you don't really know how much, you know building a shareholder's agreement is going to cost, or you don't know where to put these boundaries, because you know there's two sides to that. There's a side that you know, there's a lawyer that will, you know, spend so much time on it, um, obsess over the details that are not super relevant. And then the other side of it is the client that you know. If you're too general, they will take, will abuse. So if your engagement ladder, for example, is, you know, not setting the proper boundaries, uh, you end up, the scope of your project will stretch and stretch, and stretch, and you're doing all this work for free because you gave a fixed quote at the beginning. So there is that. But I always say, you know, whatever main goal is to an engineer is to make sure that lawyer can start making money when they sleep and then the client have more, see more value in their work. So everyone wins. Yeah, exactly.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 22:01

So I think clients are willing to pay more for certain services at different stage in their business venture, but they need to see more. They need to see things that are more relevant to them. So Clio, the software company large software company out of Vancouver that does practice management software for lawyers. They run like a legal market trans every year where they do interviews with lawyers but also people consume legal services and you know you look into this.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 22:29

There there's definitely some struggles. Communication is one you know. More and more clients of legal services want to have digital services. They don't want to go and sit downtown in a brick and mortar law firm but yet you know law firms are still building, you know, offices downtown in very expensive corner of downtown not offering a lot of services online corner of downtown not offering a lot of services online. So I think there's an opportunity there to help them through that transition, to capture that 65% or I think the number I saw was around 65% that wanted more digital services. To capture that and then offer them more through technology, like through access through different tools, online.

Dominic Kingston: 23:15

So for Ingenio's current service offering. What do you offer law firm today and what's the vision for, given what you're saying, for the future? How would you go from where you are today to digitizing the next 65% with the 65% of services?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 23:30

So we've really focused around corporate law, digital corporate law. So essentially, you know, every time a company is incorporated you need bylaw to keep certain records. Those include, like you know, constitutive documents and legal documents, but often, like, we'll have financial statement and things like this. Typically those are kept in a binder on the shelf of a law firm. Traditionally, that's all that's been done anyway. Kept in a binder on the shelf of a law firm. Traditionally, that's all that's been done anyway.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 24:00

But increasingly clients you know those are digital and clients want to have access to it. Sometimes they need to send it to their accountant, the bank. So we really focus on, you know, how do we take that binder and bring it into the digital world. So that's the first step. And then that record needs to be updated. How do we make sure that it's efficiently updated by law firms with the correct information, like really improving the accuracy of it. So we focus on that and then to offer what I would call like self-service options for client that requests something. If they want to do something at 11 o'clock, if they want to incorporate a company at 11 o'clock on a Friday night, they should be able to get started.

Lea Lavoie: 24:37

That's it. So I do have another question related to AI. So obviously you were saying there's always a new model, it's hard to keep up. So how do you stay grounded in your vision while also, obviously, you want to innovate, you want to be using the newest product? But is it kind of hard to balance that with? We just started to master this product and now there's something new? Yes, it's a lot better, but how much of your time can you spend learning new AI models?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 25:00

It's really hard because it's this whole shiny object. Like you know, every new model is supposed to be the greatest thing. Nobody release a new model and say, okay, this is worse than all of our competitors. So I think part of it is benchmarking, because you know you want to innovate, but innovating for just innovating without delivering better result is not super helpful. So I think where our focus is is try to benchmark them, and benchmark is essentially comparing the different models, and when you look at them, how they're benchmarked in regular market is you'll have they'll compare them. How are these model doing with a physics exam? Oh, I'm sorry, it's not super useful if you say how good is this with legal data or with legal documents. So you're kind of creating your own benchmarks in that case.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 25:48

Yeah yeah, we have to because we have to be able to say okay before we invest. To get to that stage, you know, is this really like the smart thing? And increasingly we also do more like proof of concept, testing beforehand, just to make sure that you know we get the right result and we put you know, as a startup, you have limited resources that we put our resources in the right, in the right net, if you allow me to do this.

Dominic Kingston: 26:16

You know the tech change is going on and sort of back to one of the questions earlier today was so how, given your services, how hard is it to get or find the early adopters within?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 26:26

the law firms. Yeah, it's hard. I think that's the hardest part. Like you know, every firm, we always have a group of people that are super enthused and want to move forward, and it is always people that are concerned about their job. And whenever you talk about innovation and technology, they always think, oh, it's a way to make me do more work for the same salary, and sometimes it's just to make you do better work, because, you know, as human, we forget things, we make mistakes, distractions and things like this. What if we can deliver the same amount of work but with less mistakes? And these have a cost? At the end of the day, that makes a huge difference.

Dominic Kingston: 27:05

And is there sort of a notion of quality of work? So if you can get the tools to do repetitive or mundane tasks, that leaves the human to do more interesting and creative tasks. Yeah, so a bit of that trade-off as well.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 27:16

It's what I call a value-added work, like essentially we're saying you know you as a lawyer. If you can spend more time with your client, you know learning about their business and what their needs are, then you know drafting corporate resolution. That's a win for everybody. You know you don't add value drafting a resolution. You had value coming up with the idea that needs to be amended by resolution, by an agreement, by instrument, all kinds of things.

Dominic Kingston: 27:45

So the drafting is the commodity work and the understanding is really the value-added work.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 27:50

Exactly, yeah, the advice. I think lawyers increasingly need to be legal advisor first, but also business advisor. I think they had like from a risk management. I think they had tremendous value in those fields and I think this is kind of the unpolished gem that they have in their toolbox that you know they're not essentially acting on and I think you know, at the end of the day, you know entrepreneurs would be a lot better, you know, if more lawyers are in that role.

Dominic Kingston: 28:19

Yeah, that's interesting. So you're taking your kind of learning how to think as a lawyer, understanding law, being exposed to business and seeing a lot of that, and really starting to advising the client on risk mitigation or those decisions, and then the drafting is really just codifying that. Yeah Right.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 28:37

Risk mitigation is important. Like I always joke, I've been saying for years that typically, if you boil down what does a lawyer do at the end of the day, most of it is risk management. Right now, how do you do this? Well, you know preserving rights and going to court. You're doing it, you know, through all kinds of litigation. But you're also doing it by agreements, by implementing, making sure you're on side of your regulatory obligation. But it's interesting Some areas of law over the years the evolution has not been like the risk element of it has been eliminated by taking an insurance policy.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 29:14

So technically you could replace entire practice area by just buying an insurance policy you can buy like in Europe it's very popular. You can buy an insurance that covers tax risk. So, for example, if you buy a company they might have done something that was a little bit aggressive in the past and you're worried about it, you can go and get an insurance policy that will pay should the tax authorities come back. You do that every day. Most people buy a house. When you buy a house, people buy title insurance. A large portion of the fees you pay to the lawyer for the transaction is towards title insurance. This is to cover something that used to be done by lawyers to review a title to make sure that there was a full line of ownership.

Dominic Kingston: 29:59

So you don't do it anymore. You just buy the insurance and skip the review.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 30:02

So technically, a lot of law can be replaced by insurance policy, but I think you know even more efficient way of doing it is, and less disruptive is through technology and innovation, just doing it right the first time.

Lea Lavoie: 30:18

And a follow-up on that. Obviously you were saying that I'm not sure exactly what the stat was, but most of the workforce is in their 50s, 60s. They're going to be retiring. Do you think it's going to become easier and easier to get lawyers to adapt as they're? You know lawyers are going to be more so millennials, hopefully Gen Z in a bit, so like. Do you think they're going to be more inclined to adapt new solutions? And obviously more tech savvy.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 30:40

There's definitely an age factor, but I wouldn't put everything on age. I think there's also an attitude. There are people, like you know, regularly when we talk with law firms, we see people in law firms that are older in age but they're very tech savvy. They've really adapted. I remember when I started practicing, you know, in mid 2000,. We had a lawyer in our firm that he was close to retirement but he was the first one to use, you know, the transcription software, like where you're talking and it's writing an email which looks trivial today but back then, you know, we're talking about 16, 18 years ago.

Lea Lavoie: 31:19

That's impressive, this was impressive.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 31:21

You know, you see that, but you also see some young people that are very incurred in the old ways and not looking at how they could improve or make their life easier. At the end of the day, it all boils down to give them more time, like if you don't spend as much time doing things that are trivial, they're not trivial, I'd say. Things are less important in the view of the client. You have more times with your family. You have more times to have a proper life work balance.

Lea Lavoie: 31:49

Yeah, it's a bit of an investment. There's a learning curve, but after that you get it tenfold over right.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 31:53

Absolutely.

Lea Lavoie: 31:55

And so far, kind of just to close off this section, what would you say has been the hardest part about building Ingenuo? Is there a certain moment, has it been implementing AI or is it, you know, the sourcing of human resources?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 32:07

Yeah, I think I always say the challenge is, you know, bridging that gap between the tech and the tech team and the legal expertise. This is our one. It's like you don't want this to be like sort of like like a railway running in parallel. You want these things to be as close as possible and and sometimes it's- hard.

Dominic Kingston: 32:27

Did you foresee that going into it, or is that sort of like you discovered the challenge of that when you're in it?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 32:33

Oh, I think I discovered it when I was in it.

Dominic Kingston: 32:36

Yeah.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 32:36

And building a team is hard. Like you know, people's life change and they come and go. You will, you're bound to hire people and, you know, have the wrong expectation or it doesn't work out. So I think this is another factor. But I think really, like they say, the rubber hit the road. When you start onboarding clients and when you're doing law, you're presented with a problem and you find a solution. When you're doing software for lawyers, you're trying to think of every problem possible and develop a solution for everything. So there's a whole prioritization of issues and you know for a fact that if you leave one door open, somebody's going to step in it. So sometimes it's you know. It's like you shake your head, but this is the hard part, yeah.

Lea Lavoie: 33:29

Okay, jp. So usually we end every episode with three bits of advice, but from a lawyer's perspective, would you have three bits of advice for entrepreneurs with how they handle the law, perhaps with incorporation or other business factors like that?

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 33:41

Yeah, I'd say, be curious about focus more on providing business advice and not just the minute details of the law that you're giving to those clients, but understanding their business, what they're doing, what are the challenges they're facing, and be there as an advisor, as a business advisor and a legal advisor, when they need you. And I'd say also, the second thing I would say is focus on giving clients the right things. Right, because you can give them things right. But if you don't give them the right things and I always think about a startup that years ago they had raised $100,000. And he said to me the first $18,000 that came out of the company was for the incorporation of the shareholders agreement.

Jean-Philippe Couteau: 34:32

They built this massive shareholders agreement that essentially, you know, six months later was outdated because they started bringing investors that wanted certain things in a shareholders agreement. So it's about scaling up what the client needs. So give them an entry level shareholders agreement covering them for the basic right. Don't try to cover everything and then exactly. So giving them the right things is really important and sometimes as lawyers, we're not necessarily trained like this and you know the model being. You know an hourly rate doesn't help with that either.

Lea Lavoie: 35:09

Thank you so much, JP.

Dominic Kingston: 35:10

You're welcome. Thank you, sir. Thanks for tuning into the show. We'll be back with more entrepreneurial advice on future shows.