Building AI Skills, Holding Space, and the Value of the Struggle with Larissa Meredith-Flister

Welcome to Studying Law Around the World. I'm Claudio Claus. In each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students, and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life. We talk about the hard parts, the surprises, and the decisions that shaped their paths. Whether you're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world, this podcast is for you. Today I have the opportunity to host Larissa Meredith Flister. She is a solicitor qualified in England and Wales and also in Canada with an LLM in European law. from the University of Cambridge and a strong economics background. Thank you so much for coming to the podcast today, Larissa. Thank you for having me, Claudio. I'm very excited to be talking about AI and my career and just to be part of your podcast. I'd love for you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about your journey. I know you have a very interesting background practicing law all the way in Canada, qualifying as a solicitor in England and Wales, and currently having an incredible career into litigation, privacy, Yes. So, I mean, I've been a little bit all over the place. It's, it's been very fulfilling and a very interesting life path, really. When I was 16, I went to the US. It was meant to be for a year on an exchange program. And I think that really opened my eyes to an entirely different life and different ways of thinking. And just when you step out of your comfort zone, right? And I did so at quite an early age. And that one year turned into 3 years and I got a scholarship to stay I started university in the US when I was 16 through a program the government of Florida had at the time, the One Moment. And then I, through a luck encounter, because I was looking for scholarships to stay in the US, I really wanted to study in the US. I was actually standing in line at Domino's with a friend and I was saying, oh my God, it's so hard. I can't, I can't get any scholarships. You have to have a green card or you have to have citizenship. And the guy who was standing in front of me turns around and he goes, I'm so sorry to be eavesdropping. But I'm a, I'm Brazilian and there's a Swan Scholarship for Brazilians and I applied and I got it. And I, I always think about this moment and it actually gives me chills because it changed my life. I stayed in the US for 3 years thanks to that scholarship as well. And then I had to go back to Brazil for the same amount of time as a scholarship. I went back through these years, I studied economics. I knew, I knew since I was a child that I wanted to be a lawyer, but just the realities really of the scholarship, I studied economics and I, I found that a very good background to have cuz it gives you a lens through which to view the world. So. Law was always my passion. So eventually I moved to Canada in my early 20s and I did a master's in economics and public policy, and I got to do an executive internship with the Deputy Minister of Health. So that exposed me to an entire different world and started to expose me more to the law, even though I wasn't a lawyer at the time. But I would attend ministers' briefings and start to, oh, how, what is the legislative process like? What input do civil servants give? How does this all work? And it was It was a fascinating experience. Once I finished that, I joined the government, the municipal government, the city of Regina in Saskatchewan as a consultant. There too, I got to understand more about how bylaws work, how public participation works, how do you, how do you engage the public, how do you do something meaningful with what you hear citizens say, and how do you make them feel heard, which again, I think are really, really important skills and for lawyers to have, and it's really important to have that awareness as well. As soon as I got permanent residence in Canada, I went to law school, which had always been my dream. My grandpa on my mom's side was a lawyer, and so was my grandma. She studied all the way to the last semester. This was back when women didn't really go to university. And then she was diagnosed with cancer and told she was going to die in 6 months. She lived to be 95, and she was such an inspiration because I grew up with this incredible woman always saying, talking about the rule of law and democracy and all of these things when I was a little child, right? And I had no idea what she was, What is the rule of law? What are you talking about? But she always talked to me about her study, you know, her studying law and my grandpa exercising as a lawyer. And that was just, so for me to actually be able to go to law school and study in Canada, it was a phenomenal experience. And while I was in law school, I worked for different professors. I was also on the board of the Saskatchewan Law Review, first as an editor and then as one of the 2 managing editors, which was, again, it was priceless. Because I got to learn a lot about legal writing, legal citations, how, but also how legal writing is evaluated. And of course, and I think this is similar to you with the podcast where you get exposed to a million ideas, I got exposed to so many different ideas because I, of course, we were receiving papers that people were sending for publication and then having these really interesting debates about the topic. How is it written? Uh, what makes for better writing? Would we accept it? Would we not? And again, that shapes how you view things, right? I got to summer at 2 really incredible law firms in Canada. My first law school summer, I was at Stevenson Hood Thornton Beaubier in Saskatoon, and then my second summer I went to Olsur in Calgary. Both phenomenal experiences with just incredible lawyers who taught me a lot and who I'm grateful to, to this day. And then when I finished law school, I clerked at the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan, where then Chief Justice Richards, Justice Ryan Frosley, and now Chief Justice Lourie. Incredible, incredible. incredible human beings, incredible mentors too. Once I was done clerking, I went to Cambridge to do a master's in European law, and that was also fulfilling a lifelong dream because I always wanted to go to Cambridge. And the people there too, like, of course the professors was fantastic, the content was really challenging and eye-opening, and at the same time, the most incredible part of it was the people because I got to meet people from all over the world, different experiences coming from civil law backgrounds, common law, Some people were judges, lawyers, just so many different career paths and all intellectually curious. And you get to live in this little bubble, which was a privilege where everyone is very intellectually curious. Everyone wants to get to know you, to share about their own experiences and to discover the law and also the world together. So that was, for me, was one of the highlights of my life. And once I finished my master's, I knew I wanted to stay in the UK and I was offered a job in London with Fergus Goodhead. And I stayed with them for just under, just under 3 years. practicing in complex litigation. That was predominantly an orange juice cartel case that I worked on, which was very interesting. And there, like, life is funny because in that moment, really, my economics background was very useful. And when I had lived in Canada, during my master's, my economics master's, I had looked at economics and agriculture. And I also taught agricultural economics at the University of Regina in Canada for 3 years. So here I found myself several years later in London working on an orange juice cartel case and seeing all the different paths I had taken in my life come together, where it's like all of a sudden knowing about economics, knowing about agriculture, it's all, it's, it's useful. And of course the law as well. So that was a very interesting experience. And I also worked on the Mariana Dam Flops case, which was really, it was challenging. I think the most challenging point there, of course, is the law too, but more than anything was meeting with victims who had been affected, deeply, deeply affected in ways that I can't, and I can't pretend to understand, right? I think unless you've gone through something like that where your life is deeply touched, you can't, you know, we can only empathize. And then learning in that space too, to hold space for people. So yes, you're there as a lawyer and you want to talk to them about the rights, what needs to be done, et cetera. But you first need to build a connection with people where you just sit there and you create space for them to share how they feel. Which again, life is very interesting because this is what I had done many, many years before when I worked for the City of Regina and we used to do public participation. Of course, the topic is very different. The depth of pain that people are sharing with you is very different, but the idea that you need to listen and you need to make people feel heard is the same. And this is quite a lengthy answer, but just over a year ago, I switched to Charles Lyndon, which is a smaller boutique firm in London, and I focus very much now on competition law. And because I love technology, digital markets. I'm very intrigued by AI, by the potential for good and for harm. They've given me a lot of space to learn more about this area of the law and to also, you know, help the firm adopt AI in an ethical way, in a responsible way. What an incredible path. Wow. I'm so impressed. I really appreciate you taking the time to walk us through your career. You worked in some of the largest collective proceedings and international litigation matters in the UK. What attracts you to, to these kinds of complex competition, complex class action litigations? I think for me, I love the intellectual challenge of it, and I love the way that it brings, as I alluded to in my earlier answer, different threads of my life together. One of— Mariana was a really challenging case, both in terms— of course, I was on the procedural side because I qualified initially in Canada and then in 2021 in Saskatchewan and then in England and Wales in 2024. So on both, both Mariana case and the Orange Juice Cartel case, I was always working with the British team on the procedural side of things. And there was a team working on the substantive law, which is foreign law. And that experience was very interesting because I got to live with, I think, this very unique experience of having an English court apply foreign law and how, how did, how does a judge do that? And also when you are a lawyer, how do you persuade a common law judge that your understanding of, for example, civil law principles and your application of those principles is correct. Of course, you have experts and, but still you have, it was very interesting to see how you have to take different concepts and translate them. So for, you have to take a civil law concept of like whatever it may be and find something similar in the common law world that although you are still applying foreign law, an English judge can say, I get it. That was very interesting. And that's very unique to these cases where the substantive law is foreign. And I got to learn a lot. And when I was at PG, by the secondment in Amsterdam, which again was eye-opening because then I'm learning a bit about the Dutch system and how do they bring complex collective actions and what new concepts do they have that don't exist in the UK. So it was interesting to see as someone who was born in Brazil, but I've spent not so much of my life outside of Brazil and I didn't study law in Brazil, but I got exposure to these Brazilian law concepts when I was a POGOS gun head, and then learning about the procedural side in the Netherlands as well. So those, that was very unique to this sort of international litigation setting. But even now that I'm working on large competition law matters where they're called opt-out in the UK, meaning we have the opt-in, opt-out model, we do predominantly opt-out cases. And it's this sort of situation, I think very similar to the Canadian class action system where there's been some sort of infringement of competition law and everyone has bought that product or service, but then they're relevant years is automatically included. So this has been a— the complexity is 100% there. It has been an interesting shift from, for example, the orange juice cartel case or the marijuana cases where I actually interacted with clients and where that sort of skill of holding space for people's pain, and you're not just thinking about the law, but you're thinking about the human being in front of you. But now it's, that's different because we work for the class representative. So I'm really now enjoying too the transition to thinking much more deeply about the law. And to actually be looking not only at the procedural side, but substantive competition law in England, working with economists, which again, life is very funny because now I work a lot with economic experts and their view of the infringement and the damages that may have occurred. Those things are, I like the complexity of them. There's no easy answer to the questions. I think that's always the case as a lawyer, right? There's no easy answers to the question, and perhaps that's very much why we like to be lawyers. That's incredible. Thank you so much for sharing that. One of the things that I really enjoy about the podcast, really, is knowing how much you can do with a law degree. You're working a lot in the AI space as well. Yeah, absolutely. And I understand that many people might focus on what AI can do for lawyers. How are we going to train our juniors? Yeah, I think AI is fascinating in both a good and a scary way. So I think there's a bit, the way you even open the question, I think there's truth to both sides. I would say on a societal level, we really ought to be thinking about how it's going to impact all of us and what constraints do we need to have in place so that the society we have in 3, 5, 10 years is a society we want to live in. And at the same time, as an individual, I think the reality is that AI is here. So the best you can do on a personal level— well, I will caveat that. I think on one hand, the best you can do on a personal level is learn to use it very well. But my caveat is that we're still citizens, so we all have a responsibility to voice or concerns to our leaders and make sure that there are constraints on how AI is developed and deployed. I think at the individual level, it is very important for lawyers to learn to use it, to understand what it can do, and to understand where it becomes very dangerous. And for me, the starting point of my journey looking at AI was Richard Susskind's phenomenal book, Tomorrow's Lawyers. I read it about, I want to say, 2 years ago, and my initial thought was, oh my God, what's going to happen? Doomsday, right? It I freaked out a little bit and I thought, oh God. But then he sets out the, what he calls kind of like the professions of the future. And I think future is a bit, it's not the future anymore. It's kind of now already starting to be very much so. You can still be a lawyer in 5, 10 years. And that is really by learning to use AI, but by learning to use AI, not just as a, don't use it as Google search, right? But use it like as how do you structure workflows with AI? How do you use it in a way that complies with your regulatory obligations, of course? And as long long as you are complying with those obligations and how can you build workflows? How can you think about repetitive tasks you have? How can you use it to augment what you do rather than replace you? And again, what are the boundaries of that use? Knowing, and I think a really big danger now is I remember when I first like used ChatGPT many years ago and I asked in very broad terms, like, are there some cases about X? And it spit out a case that was perfect. Of course, this is before we were really talking about hallucinations and all these dangers. And I was like, oh my God. Oh, there's something so spot on. And I remember going on Westlaw and I was like, okay, let me find this case. And I looked and I looked and I looked and I couldn't find it. Today I understand what was happening. ChatGPT had completely made it up. You still obviously need to check. I think the danger now lies in answers that sound very correct. The case exists, but then actually when you look at it, it doesn't say what the AI tool has said, or there are some nuances. And I think this is in a way a lot more dangerous because when the case didn't exist, you might, for example, in Canada, you might look at it uncannily and say, this is not uncannily. It's not real. Or, you know, maybe you check Westlaw, LexisNexis. Okay, I can't find it anywhere. This case probably does not exist. But now if you look, I found this case on CanLII. I think this should go without saying, obviously you need to read the whole case. As a lawyer, if you have a junior sending you something, you also need to sit down and read the whole case. You know, it's, it's, you, you're responsible for it. But I think the danger now is, is there where if someone just looks quickly, oh, the case is there. and doesn't stop to actually check, does it say what the AI tool says it says? Is it coming from the dissent rather than majority? Are there some caveats? Maybe this one paragraph says this, but 2 paragraphs below, actually, the judge is saying they're not going to follow that reasoning. I think those nuances now are very important, and they're more dangerous because it's easier to see an answer that looks convincing, but it's not actually correct. I've been following a little bit of your work and the different initiatives that you've been involved in. And one of the things that I really enjoyed is that you've been creating AI skills. in sharing them with us. So thank you for that. Maybe we should tell a little bit to our listeners what AI skills are for those who might not be familiar. I wanted to hear a little bit about the skills you've built, what kind of problems you were trying to solve when you built these tools. Of course. So I think skills are very, very helpful when you have a repetitive task. So let's say that you, for example, you might circulate an internal newsletter to your law firm every week. Or you want a summary. I want to know what decisions from the Ontario Court of Appeal have come out in the past month, or Court of Appeal of Saskatchewan, whatever it may be. Okay, I'm going to have Claude, for example, give me a little summary. And then you see that Claude has done it in a way that there's some mistakes here. And this is something you're doing every week, right? Because you've got this newsletter. Instead of every week you run into the same frustrations, and then once again, you're prompting Claude like, no, actually look at the decision, actually check the paragraphs. Say, okay, I see that there's A, this repetitive task that I do, B, the same errors are coming up all the time, C, the way to approach it is the same every time. You can then give Claude, for example, a very specific set of instructions. And if you say, okay, here we've worked through this example, you pulled up a decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal, but actually you are misquoting the paragraphs. I want you to go back and actually look at the decision and actually ensure that the paragraphs you are quoting and what you say these paragraphs say is correct. So you have this conversation with Claude, literally, and then once Claude gets it right, you then say, okay, take the content from this conversation, learn from it, and create a skill. And then Claude will do it. Like, it's— I know the idea of creating a skill can sound intimidating because I think a lot of people are on just on the user side of AI where they're saying, how can I actually use this tool so it augments what I do and saves me time? Again, you still need to verify, But if we're running into the same issues all the time, how can I teach this tool to serve me better? It's very useful to take the time for repetitive tasks and instead of just getting frustrated, which I understand why sometimes people do and say, it doesn't get it right, I'm just going to do it manually. Take the time. It might take you half an hour, but to, to get the tool to do it the way you want it. And again, using an active chat you have with Claude, I think is quite helpful because then it understands the context of what you're wanting and what's going wrong. And then you say, create a skill and then And you say, okay, now test the skill. So next week when you're going to write the newsletter again and you say, oh, now I want you to tell me what's happening in BC and I want you to run the skill when you do it. And now you see, okay, now that it's looking at the British Columbia Court of Appeal decision, is it giving me better answers? Is it getting it right? And it's this iterative process where eventually you've created, you've customized it enough that it works fairly well. It does not ever replace the need for your legal judgment as a lawyer and for you to verify absolutely everything. And it can still speed up your work. So I think this is, this is how I approached it to begin with, where I saw, okay, for me it was a matter of it's getting things wrong. And again, the danger is it was, for example, giving me texts where half the things are right, but then, and that gives you a false sense of confidence. You need to, as a human being, always stop and say, nope, you need to check every line. But it was creating this false sense of confidence because it was like, oh yeah, I'm familiar with the case. Let me look, let me check again. But yeah, this is right. Even on a quick read, this is right. But this other case, and then I would look it up and it's like, no, this is not right at all. Or it's the start of what it's saying is right, but then it's getting it wrong at some point. I was like, I want you to verify. This is a conversation with Claude, right? I want you to verify every single thing you're saying to me. And of course there's a trade-off there because then Claude becomes slower and it takes longer to respond and it will use up more of your usage. But I think when you're doing knowledge work, it's really important. So I started with a verification skill of saying you need to verify everything. And then I tested it and I tested it and I tested it and I was like, you were still making some things up. So I continued this conversation with Claude and I want, I said, I want you to give me a source for every single statement you make. And that was interesting because it forced Claude to stop. And now when I write something, if I run that skill at the top, it gives me a table. It takes quite a bit. It takes longer to answer, of course, but I think that's, that's a worthwhile trade-off. It gives me a table at the top and there it will say, you know, X statement This is the source. And then I go on the link that it's providing me and check. It doesn't replace the need to check. However, it speeds things up because it's now giving me the link to everything, a single thing it said. And interestingly, through the process of creating these skills, there were instances where Claude said, even though it was running the verification skill, it would say, my bad, you know, I didn't run it fully. And that's where source lock, the idea for source lock came in of like, no, I want you to actually have to run it fully for everything. You know, think if you're writing something that you're submitting to a judge or to a partner at your law firm and you have to put a footnote for everything. I was like, yep, Claude, this is what we're doing. I know it can, it can sound intimidating, especially for people who are not comfortable with AI, who are just starting to use it, who don't, who've not fully learned about its potential, but just think of it as a conversation. Think, take your frustrations with your AI use and turn them into skill. I mean, I think it's It's such an incredible tool and having these kinds of conversations really informs us on what else we can do. It's been just very incredible to learn from it and to see people like you building it. Thanks. Fantastic. Most of my audience here are law students or young lawyers entering the profession. And I always want to ask a few questions that will help them as they go towards their career. From your experience, what do you think that are some skills, experiences, or mindsets that you'd really prioritize if you wanted to build a successful career, especially if we're thinking about, you know, this intersection that you work on about law, technology, global practice? I would say 3 things. The first one is people. People, like connect with people, build friendships, help whenever you can. If someone asks you for help, just do it. Build those networks. I think having different networks of people in your life is the most important thing you can do. You don't know where life is going to take you, and I I think having those connections and having those connections in all sorts of different places and with people who are very different from you, there's a lot of value in that. Build bridges. And also as lawyers, we like to argue, right? Sometimes like, this person is wrong. Actually, take the time to sit down with them and understand why they think the way they think, because you will learn a lot from that and you will build bridges. Build bridges with people who are different from you. Don't just build friendships or close working relationships with people who think like you, with whom you're very comfortable, you have the same views. Views, that is also nice and comforting, but build those relationships with people who think very differently from you and who challenge you, who challenge your thinking, who challenge your views, and be open to being challenged. Be open to being influenced because sometimes I think we are so sure that we're right, and I mean, there are people who are much older who still think they're always right, but often we're so sure that we're right, and if we're open to hearing, to actually truly hearing what the other person is doing, not already with a preformed answer in your head, but actually listening, you will learn a lot. And if you maintain those connections throughout your life, you can help people a lot and they can help you a lot. And I've had so many opportunities that come up because of these connections, because of these networks. I am part of a couple of more formal networks, like for example, talking about AI Legal Quants, which is lawyers who have a very deep expertise in AI and interest in AI and represent AI, which is broader than lawyers. It's professionals, mostly women and LGBT, who are interested in AI, but also concerned about how AI is impacting our society. How it disproportionately impacts women, minorities. It's building these connections. And through Legal Quants, I'm exposed to lawyers all over the world who are doing incredible things. And through Represent.ai, I'm exposed to really interesting people from different backgrounds who think very differently from me, who are not lawyers, and I'm learning from them every day. For example, going to Cambridge, I met people from all over the world and I maintain those friendships. And I've now traveled to a lot of different countries and stayed with these friends and seen a different side of the world I would've never seen. So I think my biggest, my number one and biggest advice is networks, friendships, but truly like show up for people, help them, help them without expecting anything in return. Just help and show up and you'll see that throughout your life people will show up for you. The second one is to step out of your comfort zone. If something feels a bit scary, that is the sign to do it, right? If there's an opportunity and you're like, oh my God, let's say an opportunity shows up for you to do a secondment, you're in Canada, secondment in Asia. Yes, go, go. You might think, oh, this is a completely different legal system. I don't speak the language. Go. You know, it's, you will learn a lot. You'll meet different people and it will expand your horizons. And these are the first 2 are things that AI cannot replace because I think, and I have concerns too about how are we going to train our juniors. When I did my articles at the Court of Appeal, which I have very, very fond memories of, you know, I'd sit there and I'm going through Westlaw or LexisNexis, reading all these cases, printing them, highlighting the paragraphs, writing something for my judges. I remember an assignment where I had to sit in the library and go back all the way to the Magna Carta. It was fascinating, and it took like, it was hours of work where you're sitting there and you're having to struggle to get to the answer, and it's in that struggle that you learn a lot as a junior. I think challenges have a really important role, and I worry now with AI where you get an answer without having to work through that struggle of, I'm going to sit with all these books, or I'm going to spend hours on LexisNexis reading all these cases looking for how, how do, how do you get trained? I don't have the answer to that, unfortunately. Those kind of, those Human connections are something that AI cannot replace, and the ability to step out of your comfort zone and to say, oh my God, I have no idea how to do this, and I don't know how I'm going to learn, but I trust myself that I'll learn it. I trust myself that as long as I'm following my intuition and I'm doing what I truly believe to be right, it's going to be okay. Like, just take that leap of faith. And then the third one is to actually really learn a lot about AI. I think there's much broader discussions to be had about AI and the dangers in it too, but from the perspective of if you're law student or you're doing your articles or you're a first, second year lawyer, learn as much as you can about these tools and learn to use them in a way that will augment, not replace what you do. So you need to learn to use them in a way that it's not replacing and it cannot replace your critical thinking. So how can you be a bit more efficient by using them? I think these are the key, the key things that I would say to someone who's new here. Thank you so much for making the time to listen to this Thank you. Absolutely. Take care. We'll be in touch.