The Future of Law and What Students Need to Know with Sukhi Alberga

Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Studying Law Around the World. Today I have the opportunity to host Sukhi Alberga. We'll be speaking about a few different themes, but we'll focus a lot on this episode about legal innovation, entrepreneurship in Canada, in the legal scenario, and also how Sukhi has been playing a big role on that. Thank you so much for joining us today, Sukhi. Thank you so much for having me and giving me the opportunity to speak on your podcast. This is exciting. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. And to start off our episode today, we'd love to hear more about who you are as a professional. What has your career and education been like? So can you share with us a little bit about what you've done in that, in that sense, Sukhi? Sure, absolutely, Dario. I previously had another profession altogether. I've been in the health and the corporate sector before. So when I became a lawyer, I was considered a mature student. I was in my 30s. And so, and I went to Bond University. At the time, I was about to apply to law schools in, in across Canada. And a friend of mine told me that, you know, there's a new school in Bond University and some of the Canadian professors are teaching there. It's really cool and you get to do it in 2 years as opposed to the 3 years. And there's a lot of practical component in their teaching. So I ended up, thought, well, okay, I was single at the time and I thought, no kids, no mortgage, right? Why not do this adventure? Why not? And so I went, it was the best experience I've ever had. The teaching was amazing as well. And then I went through the NCA process and it was because Bond University was recognized as a law school with Canadian professors teaching, it wasn't so long drawn out for me. So that process was more streamlined for me and I'm grateful for that. And yeah, and then once I became a lawyer, then it was, you know, I had the ability to practice in 3 provinces. I practiced in BC and Ontario and also in New Brunswick. And so that was kind of cool. And to be able to be called to different bars and be able to do that. And then I got involved in giving back to the profession. So I got involved with Canadian Bar Association and I started an initiative with the Canadian Bar Association Atlantic Roundtable during COVID which we actually featured 4, from all 4 regions, Chief Justices that were on the panel, which was really exciting to have. That was first time ever done. And we talk about modernization of the justice system and things like that. And then I also got involved with the Canadian Bar Association Legal Futures Subcommittee, and I was a member and recently got appointed as chair. And that's how we met, because you're now a member. And so, you know, do a lot of sort of talking about our profession, the changes that are happening, speaking to professors and experts, both in legal tech and the tech world and other places of expertise. And so it's been quite the journey. I have my own multidiscipline practice and business on health law. And that was quite the journey to get, you know, permits from the law societies, both in New Brunswick and Ontario at the time when I started it out. And so that was a journey in itself. And so what we do is we provide legal services and also auxiliary accounting services and HR for businesses. And most of our business, like clients that come to us, especially if they're existing businesses and startups, they find that it's kind of nice to have, you know, a team of experts that can assist them with an issue that sometimes may be even overlapping. So it's, that's been kind of cool. And we do a lot of employment issues as well. And those who are innovating and starting up with new devices, medical devices and things like that, we assist them in getting their licensing and also compliances and regulatory compliances that they need to have. So we do an array of exciting things for our clients and it's always different. Every day is different. You don't know what you're going to get when you walk in the door. So that's kind of cool. But that's a little bit about me and my career. Wow, that's exciting. Thank you so much for sharing. And it's always nice to hear a little, you know, about how your journey brought you to the legal sector and also how those abilities, those skills you developed, the career you had before also. I feel like from what you mentioned, there's a lot of overlapping too, in the sense that you still work with health law, you still work with those things and licensing and compliance and all of that. That's amazing. But something that I was very curious about, Suki, first of all, it's great to have you in the podcast because you're the first person who's the founder of a law firm who's giving me an interview here. So that's also amazing. And If, if I may ask you, I'd love to hear more about, you know, your entrepreneurial ventures, but also if I may ask, is there any reason in particular that got you inspired to start your own law firm? Yeah, I think so. I, I think for me, I, I ended up having children and then when I was on maternity leave and COVID hit and all that, it was like, okay, what can I do differently? And what I always thought was that clients would say to me, Suki, you don't always just give us like the legal angle of things. You always give us a little bit more. Like there's always something business thing that you might make us consider or think about that we don't even know. Like you always give us a little bit more. And there was appreciation for that. And then I thought, okay, well there's an appreciation for that. Then maybe there's something here differently I can set up a business or a practice of law. And then of course in the rules you can do a multidisciplinary practice. It's there. but it's not really done. And so for that reason, I thought, okay, I think I wanna do this. I wanna do something different, provide. I think it would be something that would be beneficial for businesses because sometimes it's hard to get experts to come to the table. And when they're— when they have their own businesses and scheduling and all that, it's logistically difficult. And then it's hard to have a team of people working together and communicating. So how can I create that? And that was what I was able to do. And then out of that, I do come from a family of entrepreneurs. So I think it's a little bit in my blood. So I kind of think a little bit along those lines that way. And then out of that, when COVID hit and we were doing a lot of talks and podcasts and co-chairing, I was involved in all these conversations about what's happening in our profession. You know, COVID's hit, we haven't had any kind of innovation for over 30 years, and all of a sudden senior lawyers are finding themselves learning how to use Zoom and taking client meetings from home because everything's checked out. So how do we do this? How are the court systems dealing with how do we continue to make sure there's access to justice when everything, the world is shutting down? Like, how do we deal with all this? And what does this mean for law? And how is law going to look like when we go forward? And it was in those conversations that I started to hear people talking about, well, especially those in the tech world, when they saw a little bit of a gap in the law that, oh, there hasn't been some innovation, maybe we can help. So here comes like LegalZoom and all these other ones that are coming in and being introduced, but not really understanding our landscape of how things are done and how they work. And there was a little bit of a negative dialogue that was coming out as a result where the tech world sort of was saying, hey, you know, not all of them, but some of them were saying out there, CEOs and things, we need to do away with lawyers. All they do is push paper and charge a lot of money, and AI's gonna replace them in a few years. And it was like, no, wait a second. This needs, our public needs to be educated about what we do and how we do it and why there's so much complexity in law. And so I thought, what can I do to help with that. And I reached out to a good friend of mine who is a lawyer and also in the tech world in the States. And I said to him, I said, Zach, I have an idea and I want to build something, but I don't know where to begin. And he said to me, oh, well, there's different software platforms out there like Python and all that. I think he was just simply entertaining me at the time. And then I don't think he thought I was serious. So then when I got into it, I found a platform that I thought would work for me. And when I got into it, I realized, well, it still doesn't do what I want it to do. I needed to do a certain thing. And I found myself learning encoding. Next thing I know, I'm diving into learning encoding and trying to manipulate the system to make it do what I want it to do, which I managed to do. And I remember even being like, when you're so zoned in something and you've got an idea, Those of us that are in law, like, we have to have a passion for law, right? Like, people who have a passion for law stick it through for a long period of time, right? Because it's not easy. It's not an easy thing to do. And having said that, I was so driven that I gotta at least get this done and see if this is— there's something here that I remember being up for 72 hours. You know, I gotta practice, I got twins, you know, and I'm a single mom. I'm trying to do all of this. And I found myself going, oh my God, I'm missing a slash. It was just this one slash, you know, kind of thing. Um, so I, I, I went to my friend and I emailed it to him confidentially, you know, securely and everything. And I said, here, take a look at what this is. And instead of emailing back, he calls me up right away and he's like, oh my God, do you know what you did? And I thought, oh no, I messed this up. Well, it turned out, he said, you did computational contracts. And I was like, well, what is that? Now I need to learn about that. And that's the beauty again about law. Like your whole podcast is about studying law around the world. The beauty of law is you're always learning. Like it's always going to be something different. That's like, that's the key for me. That's what gets me going about law and the educational component of it all, right? And so I said, okay, well, I got to learn what this is all about now. And then he said to me, well, are there any sandboxes in Canada? Because we have a lot in the States. States where you can take it to your platform and see if the law society will approve it for you. So I said to him, I know there's one in BC, but I think they're starting one in Ontario. So I reached out to Ontario and they were starting one out and they said, Suki, we weren't thinking of having a lawyer come to us. We thought we were going to have tech companies, like lawyer wasn't necessarily on our radar. And I said, well, here I am. We work collaboratively to figure this out. Like, come on, we've gotta innovate for our industry. How can we work together on this? The manager at the time overseeing the sandbox, he liked the idea and he said, yeah, let's work on this together. And so it was a 19-month vetting process and a lot of stuff I had to go through because I was a lawyer. But at the end of the day, I have to say the Law Society and collaborating with their sandbox was a good thing because it helped build a quality product for me. I mean, to the extent they said I had to go get a quality assurance person, which again, I had to figure out. And the CEO of the software that I built it on, she was such a big supporter and is today. Shout out to you, Dorna. She, she helped me get a quality assurance person. They liked the credentials of the person because that person had helped so many sandboxes in the States and with government procurement contracts for legal tech companies. She came really highly qualified and the law side was really impressed by her that she helped me cross the finish line. And now we're the 3rd approved participant in the sandbox. And so it's exciting. And then while I was in the process, I didn't know, and this is another thing for your listeners, ignorance is bliss. Sometimes when you do something just out of passion and you can do it innocently, great things can happen. Because I didn't know that they had an advisory council of the sandbox to approve applications consisting of 13 experts across Canada, including some that ended up being actually guest speakers at the Canadian Bar Association podcast that I had. I had no idea. So had I known, I probably would have gotten intimidated and not put my application in, but I didn't know and I just put it in. So when I got stage 1 approval, they said to me, you can scale this. And it was like, but I was just wanting to help startups and businesses, existing businesses do like have increased access to justice, you know, and kind of just give back to society in that kind of way. And then it was like, I can do that. So then the idea came, oh, I can help train, you know, young junior lawyers that are working in firms and help with critical thinking and help them to create legal binding agreements. So that's what I can do now. So anyway, at the end of the day, I ended up doing a platform that called Cancel Your Docs. And it's a shareholder agreement. We started off with one product because they always say, In the entrepreneurial world, always start with one product, right? And then you can go from there. So I chose a shareholders agreement because as most of you will come to know, those of you students or are starting to practice now, a shareholder agreement is a critical agreement when it comes to businesses because not only does it affect your everyday decision-making, it also affects your succession planning, your taxation. There's a lot of complexities when it comes to that. So not only did I create a public version to simplify that process and help the public actually do their own, but I came up with the one for a law firm that could actually also help law firms train critical thinking and also customize their own unique way of doing what they do, right? And then at the same time, we've now innovated new roster of products that have been released as well, like an NDA, term sheet, employment agreement. So we've done that as well. And so we're still innovating and we want to do it all with, you know, in mind with governance and compliance, data security, all that kind of stuff. So that's kind of been happening and that's been my journey while juggling everything else, been doing this as well. That's amazing. And the cool thing is while I was doing all of this, I thought I was just going to do it for the public, but it turns out, you know, it's also beneficial for the law firms and now I'm getting law schools interested in being able to implement this. So we're getting a lot of traction from different individuals coming to us and saying, hey, we like what you built. It's a useful tool. How can, you know, how can we implement it in our organizations? The reason why I'm saying all this is that sometimes you don't know when you're starting out in an entrepreneurial business where you're going to go and how it's going to evolve. Important thing is to remember is don't always be so tight with your idea. Be willing to be open to allow it to evolve into anything that it's meant to evolve. And that's a good thing. That's incredible. So just before we go forward, can you tell us again the name of your company for those who might be interested to, you know, learn about this training opportunity and all of that? Absolutely. It's called counselyourdocs.com and you can look up on our website. I'm sure you'll be able to put that up on your information in your podcast, if you could, that would be great. For sure. Learn more, more about what we do. And we still plan on innovating and doing further innovation in our, in our industry. Fantastic. And talking about industry innovation and your initiative and the subcommittee, there's so much going on, which is incredible. But also, uh, recently you've been to a conference in BC. talking about all of these topics. So I'd love to know a little bit if you could share with us what's going on in the profession. It seems like there's a lot of people who are, you know, really thinking about how can we improve all different aspects of, you know, a lawyer's quality of work, life, and all of that. So if you could give us, you know, a little bit of what happened in this conference, what was it all about? Yeah, so the Legal Innovation Forum, which Andrew Boyer, he's the one that oversees that. Shout out to Andrew. When he got wind of what I was doing, he was very excited and asked me to be a guest speaker and also to exhibit Counsel Your Docs there. So that was great. And it was a lot of lawyers and legal tech companies coming together and other individuals in the space of providing legal services, such as cybersecurity insurance, all that. So there were a lot of different companies that were out there coming together, and they were talking about innovation in the legal industry, including, which we can't ignore now, AI and generative AI and the impact it's having in our industry and what does all that mean. And I think one of the great takeaways from all of that was, and I myself agreed with a lot of guest speakers, and I mean, I think we were aligned in that, is that AI is here to stay. AI can be a great tool to leverage, but at the same time, because We're the lawyers. We have to learn and educate ourselves on how to use it. Second of all, we also have to have guardrails in place and governance and compliances that need to be in place because our duty is to serve the public, and the public still needs to be protected. And at the end, those technologies in other industries that are innovating in lightning speed right now, That's great, right? But what, anything goes wrong there comes and lands in front of our desks, right? Or in front of our judges. But the legislation that we're dealing with hasn't had much change in amendments yet, but we still have to be confined within those legislation to be able to apply it. So for us, in our speed, in our level of innovating, has to be done in sort of a reasonable sort of way and in a contained guardrail, safe rails, compliance, privacy data, that kind of basis. Like I remember listening to one cybersecurity lawyer from the States at an AI webinar recently, and I loved the way he said it. He said, you know what, if ever has a data breach, AI is dead in our industry. And that's true. That is very, very true because we are, our practice of law is built on privacy, confidentiality, client-lawyer relationship and privilege, all of that. That's our foundation. So we need to really do this in a very wise and in a governance kind of way of implementing AI. And we shouldn't be afraid of it. We should be excited about it. We should see how do we leverage it for efficiency and everything else. At the same time, We also have to understand we as lawyers and what we provide and what we bring to the table with the unique situations that can come up and apply, right? What the legislation say, like that provides a special skillset that we get through training in law school, but then over time through experience, right? And to be able to apply that. And how do we share that with those that are coming, the next generation of lawyers? And those that are exiting out, how do we balance that and work together and collaborate to make sure that our profession is still serving our public with excellence and protecting them, right, is I think key, and that just gives us more relevance, right, in our society, in our community now, and so I think those things are really important. Those are the kind of things that were sort of brought up in the conference. It was a very excellent conference. to attend and it was very thought-provoking, right? As we discussed. Yeah. That's incredible. No, thank you so much for sharing this. And I think those insights are really something that we need to be looking out for. As you said, AI, for example, is coming to stay. And even though, you know, sometimes I hear these kinds of comments in law school now that every third article, every third link you see, it's all about like AI and the legal profession, AI, just a lot of things are just being repeated and being generalistic. But that's how we, I guess, learn and go through a frontier. So it's good to have that in the beginning. And as we progress, hopefully we'll be able to have a lot of good things coming out of it. And if I may ask, moving forward, can you tell us a little more about the subcommittee? I'm so happy and honored to be joining as a member and you mentioned it quickly. So can you tell us a little more about what's the purpose? Also, how long have you been a part of it? You mentioned you were a member before being the chair. Yeah, yeah. So I think I'm in my second year now with them. I think with, that's for the Legal Futures Subcommittee. And then for the Atlantic Roundtable, I think we're in our, gone on our 5th Atlantic Roundtable that we're doing. So it's been a while there. And again, that was an initiative that I just simply proposed to them and they were open enough They liked the idea and now it's become an Atlantic thing. First it started local and then it became Atlantic thing for all the regions. So that, that's been great. It's been great working with the Canadian Bar Association. The individuals that work there, they really are wanting to support their members and really get information out there and be of value. And I love being part of that team and being able to participate and make a contribution in that way. The Legal Futures Subcommittee, we talk about a lot of topics that, you know, what are the changes that are happening in our profession, be it when it comes to young lawyers coming into the profession and, you know, sometimes we're finding we're losing talent. They're not staying long enough. Why is that? You know, why are people looking to alternative ways of practicing law or alternative careers and exiting? How can we keep them? What can we do change differently? What are the issues? We talked about, we've talked about equality and diversification in the practice. What does that truly mean? And how can we make those changes that can be positive and lasting? Mental wellness, wellbeing, those individuals who, you know, now that there's more awareness of the difference between mental wellness and mental illness, we should be able to support individuals that, you know, are struggling through that. We've had guest speakers that have come who are lawyers who have come out and said, well, I have bipolar disorder, but I manage it and this is what I'm doing. How brave of them to be able to speak to that and take away the stigma that's attached to that, you know? And law firms learning how to retain talent and keep them and how does talent get— give them opportunities to advance as those in senior positions are retiring. And again, I think we try and come up with interesting topics that are relevant, that are on mind of people who are asking questions, and then bring the experts that come in and get those answers, right? So that members have value. And we put a lot of resources too, are up on, I think CBA has a lot of resources that are up on their website too that you can always look in and tap into. And then members get, you know, some of the stuff that we put out there is CPD accredited and others are just informational and that are helpful and provide value. It's been an honour to be part of the Canadian Bar Legal Futures Subcommittee. It's been an honour to be part of that because we, the members together, come up with some great ideas. We did an AI webinar last year, which was fantastic. 3 days on different topics with different experts. And people got a lot of benefit and learning out of that. So we got great responses from that, and we hope to do more and more programming and informational tools out there to help our members and those who are going to be members soon, right? That's right. That's right. No, that's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all of this information and these opportunities that people can be looking out for. And As you were talking about the subcommittee now, I was thinking about something that really could be nice for us to share here, Sukhi. If you were a law student today, what are maybe 2 subjects you would recommend a law student today to, you know, check it out more, learn more about, that could, you know, help them to get an understanding about the legal profession for the future? or, you know, what's going on out there. So if there is any, you know, resource or maybe a specific subject they should, you know, go Google about and learn more about, is there something like that? Is there anything that you'd recommend? Yeah, I would read the professors like Professor Teresa Cassa, Professor Amy Salsen is one that comes to mind, who talk about AI and technology from the University of Ottawa, learning and understanding law and AI and technology and how it should work together. compliance issues that come up with the law societies and how they regulate all of this. Those are important things I think students should start to begin to understand because it's going to affect the way you practice law, right? And then I think the other important thing is to educate yourselves and finding information, or even just, you know, sometimes it's just great to interview or talk to other lawyers that are already practicing. I know it's kind of old school, but you know what? It's a great way to get educated because what they tell you in their area of practice, if you're interested in an area of practice, it's always good to reach out to someone and say, hey, can we go for coffee? Can I have an informational interview with you? Meaning I just want to be a sponge and hear what your day in and day out practice looks like. And then I think also it's important for lawyers to understand That whether you work for a firm, maybe an in-house counsel or a large legal firm or a mid-sized firm, or you have your own practice, understand business. What does it mean to run a business? Because at the end of the day, it is a business. And how do you build client relationships and how do you maintain them? How do you serve? Your clients, all those key things that people may think, well, I'll just learn as I go. If you get some of those gold nuggets from those who are already doing it and have the experience and have successfully been doing it, I think just adds to your toolbox of tools for success, right? So, um, I think those would be my 2 real key suggestions for For students who are, you know, just about to get called to the bar and are ready to start their journey. I think to myself, when I started out, there were some resources, but not that much. Most of us were still just kind of winging it, right? And figuring out how to do it. And back then, I think the other thing that we're going to talk about, I think we were thinking in our subcommittee at one point, we're having experts in and talking about The experience of articling now and international students and, and those who are, are being called to the bar here in Canada, what that experience is like. There's a different mindset from when those lawyers who were before me and lawyers of my time, we were sort of, you gotta pay your dues, you know? Mm-hmm. You gotta put your nose To the, this is like, you know, you just gotta work it, you know? And they say, and I was of the school, if, and a senior lawyer came to me and said, can you do this? I'll say, I, my response was, okay, how high do you want me to be? You know what I mean? And, and then it was also trying to anticipate what their needs were. So that was the thing for me. That, that was kind of my mindset of how to, to learn and become. The lawyer that, you know, I hope I am to, you know, and then I'm, and I think those are, that was the one way of the way we used to do it. But now with the new generation that is coming in lawyers, there is a different shift in society as a whole. It's more about, well, no, I want a balanced life. I want tools. I want certain things that can be done for me so I can have my work-life balance. because I recognize family is important. I recognize well-being is important. I want to balance it all. Those are all good things. Don't get me wrong. They absolutely are. And those of us in that generation, we're learning to do that, right? And we're thriving to do that in the context of what we've learned and the work ethic that we have, right? But now there's a shift to that. And then it's, I think it's, we have to learn from each other. I think What would enrich our profession even more is those of us who are, you know, in it and maybe coming near to the end of it, working with those that are coming into it and starting out and recognizing the world is different, but then how do we come together and what can you learn from me and what can I learn from you, right? And then be able to really push our profession in a place where it's still going to have relevance, right? And impact. And what we do is a very privileged thing that we do. And I think we should honor that and help that to grow and nurture it. So for me, that's where my heart place is. And through educating and collaborating and working and innovating, I think, you know, a lot of young lawyers that are coming in could have very successful Successful and rewarding careers. Amazing. Amazing. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to share all of these insights with our listeners. Thank you so much, Suki, for, for this wonderful episode. Thank you all for tuning in as well, and we'll see you all in the next episode. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. This was a lot of fun. Thank you.