A different kind of stamina: AI and law with Lamyaa Gadelhak

Lamyaa Gadelhak: The younger generation is a bit harshly judged by older generations. They don't need the kind of stamina we built because with every evolution there's an evolution of another skill. They don't understand the concept of questioning AI.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Really?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Do you question a calculator?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: I don't question a calculator.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: I think that's the same answer.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: But a calculator is deterministic.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: True, but I think they don't see the difference.

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Patrick Fitzpatrick: Hey everyone, this is the latest episode in our deep dive into AI and what it means to us here in the Arab world. This time, I wanted to talk to someone whose whole profession is inside the blast radius of a technology that some in Silicon Valley say is going to eliminate most white-collar jobs. My guest today is a partner at Baker McKenzie and one of the country's best-known corporate lawyers. She chairs the firm's Global Project Finance group. And what's particularly cool is that she does it from here in Cairo. Lamyaa Gadelhak has spent more than 20 years doing the thing that AI is now supposedly coming for: giving counsel to super-demanding clients who trust her advice because she knows the law, the people, and the environment here. Lamyaa is a long-time friend of Enterprise, and we've been kicking back and forth questions that should keep everyone in the service industry awake at night. Stuff like, "Is ChatGPT going to take away my clients? What are we actually selling?" So today's episode is for anyone who sells what's in their head for a living: lawyers, sure, but also accountants, consultants, bankers, and other advisors — the whole guild of human judgment, if you will. AI is full of both doom and hype right now in almost equal measure. My take is that it's going to be messier, more complicated, and simply stranger than either the cheerleaders or the doomsayers want you to believe. And that's the conversation. Lamyaa, welcome to Making It.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Thank you, Patrick. Thank you for having me.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Let’s start really simple: on an ordinary workday, where does AI actually show up for you?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: All the time. Actually, if it doesn't show up, then something's wrong.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Really?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah, it's a tool. It's a very important tool. And I think anyone who doesn't use it is missing out. There was this funny situation with an associate where he was accused by a client of using AI in a fun manner. Like, "You did this with AI." 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Okay. 

Lamyaa Gadelhak: And the discussion was, "Well, if he doesn't use AI, then I need to have a discussion with him. Why didn't he use AI?"

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Why didn’t he use it...

Lamyaa Gadelhak: It's quite interesting how the legal profession is being attacked, like "There will be no more lawyers," and so on. The way we work as a firm is that we recognized this a long time ago. We've had a chief innovation officer for a very long time, and we have had our eye on technology for the longest time before AI, there were other tools of automating contracts and just making things quicker and more efficient. But AI takes not just us, but the world to a different level. It's a completely different ballgame for everyone. The way we operate is that we're not dealing with exclusive service providers.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: I was going to ask you, what model are you using? And how?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: So we are using Copilot and Legora. 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Okay. 

Lamyaa Gadelhak: so it's a continuous effort of seeing what's out there and just providing our lawyers with the best tools available. Some other law firms are adopting different models. Some of them are dealing exclusively with certain service providers, and actually others have announced that they will be developing their own AI. So law firms are adopting different strategies. But definitely, the use of technology in our business as a firm is not new. There is a new technology, there is a policy set as to how to use it, when to use it, what kind of disclosures you make, if any. To get a license to use AI, I had to go through training and tick the box that I took that training.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: An internal license from the firm.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah, so that they extend the license for my use. But it's also not the case that if you don't do the training, you don't get the license. If you don't use AI, you're in trouble. You're not keeping up with the industry. You're not delivering the value you should be delivering.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: If you don't use it, you're in trouble. But how do you use it? 

Lamyaa Gadelhak: As in Lamyaa? How does Lamyaa use it?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah, what does Lamyaa do with it day to day?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: I'm someone who likes exploring. If there is something new, I like to explore it myself. It's like a board game: reading the rules is not like — I'm always the person saying, "Let's do one round where I learn it." And with every single time I'm using it, there's something new that I unlock. My favorite way of using it — because there are so many ways of using it — is like I'm talking to myself. You know, when you talk to yourself and things start to crystallize?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah, sometimes you have to say something out loud and work it through.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah, but when you're talking to yourself, you don't always answer yourself. I like bouncing things with the AI, 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: okay

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Because it does respond, and it responds with a different angle or a different way. It's not necessarily myself. And in law, this is very important. I think I and others should be careful that I don't take that away from having deliberations with the team. It's very common with any lawyer: when you have an issue or something that you're thinking you're too much in your head about, you just call in your colleagues and you sit and start bouncing discussions together, even if they're not involved on the file. But you don't always have that luxury, and you don't always call people in and start having that discussion over trivial stuff. But with your AI agent, you can do that.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Do you trust the AI to help you draft?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: No, no. Well, trust is a big word, huh?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: It is.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: AI is a tool. Do you trust the knife? You see what I mean?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: I see what you mean.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: I just cannot put trust and AI in the same sentence, because I see it as a tool. I don't see it as more than that. And so it's about trusting my own capabilities to use AI or not, or a person's capabilities to use AI or not.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: What is the most impressive thing that it's done?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Most impressive is speed. 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Okay 

Lamyaa Gadelhak: I'm always super impressed about how I put in some request that could be quite complex, and with a click — just give it a few seconds — and [woosh] 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah. 

Lamyaa Gadelhak: I think this is the most impressive aspect of it.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: I still to this day believe that AI too often lies to you, and lies to you with absolute confidence.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah, absolutely.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: The other day I was using it to pull in some background research from files that existed in my Google Drive, and I provided it with the links. It hallucinated brand new links and brought me completely different information, still from my files, saying that this was an answer to my question. When I prompted it and said, "Hey, that's actually not what I was asking for," it was like, "You're right to call me on that. I hallucinated that, and here's my chain of logic for how I got there." I've found it inventing background on deals. What's the biggest whopper that you've run into?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Well, it depends when. As soon as ChatGPT appeared, like I was telling you, I always want to play with whatever's new. I downloaded that, and I just asked, "Who is Lamyaa Gadelhak?" And it just said very weird stuff. It was like I used to be this artist, and then I went into politics. It was just complete nonsense.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: That's a heck of a career.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah, but it was very early on.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: No, it's vastly improved.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: It did. But in my professional use of it in law, it's easier for me to know when it's doing that because of the experience I have. You keep getting those emails giving you tips about the prompts, because this is the gap. Asking the right question is one side of it — and this is even with a human peer; if you're asking the wrong question, you get the wrong answer, right? The second thing is to poke the answers to make sure I'm getting the right thing. Sometimes I'll ask, "You said this is the price on that site it's not the price, explain it," and then it corrects itself. But that's part of the development of the tool as well.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: You identified that AI is the combination of what people have done. These companies have trained on a huge corpus of information created by people like us, but it's disproportionately weighted towards stuff that is in English in the West, which embeds in it Western legal norms, cultural norms, and how financial systems and business transactions work in the West. How does that color how you can use it as a lawyer who practices in emerging markets?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Well, there are some AI products that are being developed that are focused on Arabic speakers. Of course, they don't have the funding or the support that these kind of AI models have abroad to develop at the same speed and so on, but there are some that are trying to cater to that.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Allam, Motive, Saudi…

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah, and I've heard of another one, an Egyptian one as well. I'm not sure what the name was, but I heard of it recently. You live in Egypt and you've been living here for a long time.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: 25 years.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah. And when you are doing some paperwork and you need to go handle something, and there is this officer sitting and there's a machine, where do you go?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Where's the machine?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Next to the — 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: I mean, I haven't experienced the machine.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Well, that's an answer. You haven't experienced the machine because you still don't trust that the machine here delivers what you need. There is an advantage to being where we are. It's not always appreciated.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Okay.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Things are not systematic here. The English law system or the common law system is the standard, and so models are built on that basis. There is still — always a local nexus.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Of international counsel and local counsel.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Absolutely. And these models are not developed to cater to the local aspect. So the value of local knowledge and the ability to deliver value will, in my view, increase, because this is not replaceable.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: What does Legora know about GAFI?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Oh, nothing. It knows what GAFI means.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Probably knows the acronym.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: But it will learn. I think it serves us that it learns. But again, there is a certain human aspect that carries a lot of value in Egypt and our side of the world that is not replaceable. I don't think AI will replace lawyers. It will either create stronger lawyers or weaker lawyers, but it cannot completely replace them. But let's assume it can replace them. It will replace it somewhere, which everything is digital. And in our market, in our country, in our region. Not everything is automated. And so let's say if a lawyer is replaced in the US or the UK or in Europe today, I don't think that will happen this side of town that soon at all. But I disagree with the statement

Patrick Fitzpatrick: With the premise.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah, there are certain characteristics that are very visible in different nationalities, right? So Egyptians, because of how our market works and how our life is, are very resilient and very resourceful. We're part of a large firm and we have 75 offices. There have been some situations where there are clients working across different offices and facing a situation with another office, and so they sometimes ask us to be involved in something that doesn't necessarily have an Egyptian nexus just to brainstorm on it, because we have that angle.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: That's really cool.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Exactly. This is something we're very proud of and we should be proud of. I like AI because it makes me smarter.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Okay.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: It's like adding the IQ capacity that you can host. But all that is human skills that cannot be replaced. In negotiations where you have to read the person, and your style should differ depending on the person sitting in front of you. Lawyers are not people who know the law; it's what they do with the law. If it was black and white, then you wouldn't need a lawyer.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: It's not deterministic — one plus one doesn't always equal two.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: And historically, the profession of a lawyer, the way it was created, is you needed someone to speak on your behalf. Someone who can — 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Advocate for you.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Absolutely. I'm always saying the younger generation is a bit harshly judged by older generations. I see them as very creative, very passionate, very impatient — that's true. But I think the mismatch of how they are perceived is mainly in how they are judged by standards that do not fit their generation.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: What are those standards?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: When I was in law school, when I needed to research something, I went to the library, took out the books, sat there for four hours, and then when I found what I needed, it was a reason to celebrate. They don't need to do that, but that built a lot of stamina. I started at a time where finding information is what made you stand out.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Interesting.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: They were raised at a time where information is abundant, and what they do with the information is what counts. So why do I judge them by the stamina I built sitting in that library for four hours? Okay, they don't have that stamina, I agree, but they didn't have the reasons to. The current generation that has been in the market a bit short of ten years will judge 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Gen Z and Gen Alpha coming up.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Well, the ones at school now that are required by their curriculums to use AI, otherwise they are outdated. 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Things are quicker. I have no expectations that they should have the patience that I had because I built it over time, but I built knowledge with it as well. They can find that knowledge, but they will not be able to assess it. So we each have things that we built over time.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: I think it is human nature to need to feel superior to somebody, and there's no easier way than to look at the people coming up behind you and say that they have no idea how easy they have it.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: You think so?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I think it's something built into humans. My father used to joke, "When I was your age, I walked uphill to school in snowstorms. You have no idea how easy you have it," joking.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: But you don't need to do that.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: I didn't, yeah. I want to stay with young people for a second. That type of grunt work that you experienced in law school had a form when you started practicing, and that was being the person who had to do discovery and walk through a due diligence file by yourself with no AI help, doing document review, writing first drafts. There was a whole class of stuff that you had to grind at that people who came up in your generation, in our generation, had to deal with. What replaces that apprenticeship for the next generation of legal practitioners?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Well, the question is, will that apprenticeship be needed?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: There has to be an entry level, right? There is an extent to which you start here, and you're brought up in the norms of the profession, where you learn what it is to be a lawyer. You learn what you put on paper versus what you hold in your head. You learn by observing someone like you. But there has to be a first step. What's the first step in law?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: I always say that a law graduate is not a lawyer. Being a lawyer is a practice. You practice law. And the question you raise is a very good one, and I'm not sure what the answer would be, because I really think we are at this stage where the market's changing no matter what we do. We're not keeping up as quick, curriculums are not evolving as quick — nothing is evolving; it's just not possible. I think the scene will change completely when it comes to our side of town. A lot of the documents are in Arabic, a lot of them are not scanned the way they should be scanned, and there's not a conversion, so there's still a need for manual work that will not go away very quickly. I think the focus on character and skills will be higher.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: What type of skills?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: I think I've told you about the story before, but when I was going through an assessment to be a partner at the firm, which was in 2016, they didn't test my knowledge of the law. 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: You were grilled on what is?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: I was grilled on my skills. I went through this process — which does not exist anymore as an assessment to make it, but it's still there from a training standpoint. They hired trained actors to provoke me and my colleagues and see how we react. When you think of it, if you reflect on any job in the world, the more senior you become

Patrick Fitzpatrick: The less you do the thing.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Management and business development. Those skills reflect into how you manage your files, how you manage your clients, how you manage your peers, how you manage people around you, and how you sell the business. There were situations where I had to deal with an angry client. There's an early scenario where you have a meeting with an in-house counsel — it's a 20-minute meeting, and they're very busy — and the actor is instructed to provoke you. So you're very pleasant, offering drinks, and they'll be like, "Look, I don't have time. I'm very busy." And the moment you start working, they start playing with their phone.

And there is a scenario where the client is angry. He’s angry because of a younger associate in the team, a younger lawyer in the team who has made a mistake, and you have to deal with that associate and mentor him. But then you're in a situation where the associate is crying, okay? So things like that.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Given we're an international law firm, it's a melting pot of cultures, and it's very interesting. It was me, an Italian colleague, and a colleague from the Asian continent. We were put in a situation, and we all acted completely differently. I went into the meeting with the trained actor, and they give you a LinkedIn page of their profile, and they want to see what information you pick up and how you use it and things like that. And that's where, if I had AI, I would have AI help me prepare. 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Okay 

Lamyaa Gadelhak: “Here's a brief. What stands out?" That would have been a very valuable tool, but it wouldn't have replaced the need for me to appear in the room and do the action.

So I started doing the sales pitch of our services and what we do. Later in the meeting, when it was getting a bit more relaxed and there was a bit of rapport, I started asking about some personal things that appeared on the profile, like they were part of a support group related to autism. I asked about it, and the actor was very touched that I was interested to speak about it. The feedback I got was, "That was really nice. I wished you brought it up earlier." But I was like, "How do I bring it up earlier? We don't know each other. This is personal."

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: And then another colleague was all about making the client or the actor like him: "So we don't speak about work; we gain your trust first, and then if you like me, you'll send me the work." And the feedback was, "Where's the work bit?" His feedback was, "Well, you wouldn't work with me if you don't like me." And the third one, from an Asian culture, was very professional — there was nothing personal there. The feedback was, "They didn't feel like I know you at all. You could have smiled." And he was like, "If I smile in my culture, you think I'm stupid."

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: It's about human skills, and I think this is where it's going to be much more valuable, and where a younger lawyer should... Of course, knowing the law and learning the law — they will miss out on a lot of stuff. But like the example I gave you earlier, they don't need the kind of stamina we built. They need stamina, and the more they have, probably the more they'll stand out, because with every evolution, there's a devolution of another skill. With the calculator, you lost something, right?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: We lost something.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: You know what skill they need? Not trusting AI. Just remembering that it's a tool that is there to help you, make you smarter, make you more efficient, make you more... But you have to build up what it magnifies. It cannot replace you. If you allow it to replace you, then — 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: You still need to understand how to structure. You have to stand still.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Absolutely. But you can ask it a lot of things that will allow you to just use it like the book I used in the library — source of information, but connect the dots yourself. It came to my attention that there are younger lawyers using AI who don't understand the concept of questioning AI.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Really?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Because it knows best.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Is it that they trust AI and think it knows best, or is it that we're lazy?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Do you question a calculator?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: I don't question a calculator.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: I think that's the same answer.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: But a calculator is deterministic.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: True, but I think they don't see the difference. And that's where I think they need to not trust the AI. Trust it you're replaced.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: You've told me that you think in the long run there will probably be fewer lawyers in the end, but that the ones who are left will be really, really good.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: So I told you that, what, three years ago? 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah. 

 Lamyaa Gadelhak: Let me maybe think about it again now with you. At the time, my view was that I believe there will be fewer lawyers. Maybe. I don't know, but there are multiple scenarios, and probably they will all come true. Maybe in certain areas of the world there will be fewer lawyers. On the other hand, legal help is not cheap, and maybe AI will make it more affordable — noting that AI will never, in my view, replace a lawyer. But it gives you access to information that you usually used to get from someone that you pay a quite hefty sum for. So maybe in some parts of the world, fewer lawyers and more service, and in other parts, more lawyers. But definitely it will increase the gap or visibility of what makes a good lawyer and a not-as-good lawyer.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: The AI podcast bros are all suddenly experts on Jevons Paradox, the notion in economics that I'll completely bastardize, but that boils down to: if the price of a commodity comes down and it becomes more widely affordable, it actually stimulates demand for it. Is there a world where we have more lawyers because you can do more faster? In software development specifically, AI lets you do more faster, and it doesn't mean that you do fewer projects — it means you take on more ambitious things because you can do more.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: It frees up some of your time to do more.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Absolutely.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Does it necessarily mean more lawyers? I don't think…

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Is there a finite amount of legal work?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah. As long as — because legal caters for life, these are the rules of society.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: As long as people are interacting, there is always the need, perhaps, for someone to advocate for you. I don't see how this puts an end to it. On the contrary, I think it just opens more, because then I think there will be a specialization of AI law. If I'm being super futuristic, there will be lawyers that are specialized in liability resulting from the use of AI. One of the major issues with AI is accountability, and this is one of the reasons why so far it is not replacing a lawyer, because then who is accountable? So I'm not necessarily seeing it increasing the number of lawyers, or maybe in certain areas... Does everyone use a lawyer for a lease agreement? No. I think there will be more of those kind of standardized things that you will not necessarily want to spend money on a lawyer for, but then other areas will open up.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: My last question for you before we take a break: you had a friend whose daughter was deciding whether to study law or not, and you were called in to play auntie and give her some advice. What did you tell her, and what did she decide in the end?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: What I told her is not... I don't know what she did with it.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Okay.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Studying law is either one of the things you enjoy most in life, or it's what's going to make you the most miserable in life.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: My brother is a lawyer, and that checks out.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah. Okay, good.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: That's sort of a binary, right? Like, you love it, or you are an ex-lawyer.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: And even when you love it, sometimes it makes you really miserable. But because you love it, you can overcome it. Yeah. So this was one piece of advice. The second one was: think about the impact AI would have on your future as a lawyer, and when you choose specializations, take that into account. Law will not go away, but don't go specializing in something that is going to go away. Education is not keeping up with the speed of how things are evolving, so you need to be a bit forward-looking and contemplating where this is going and take a view on that. Don't specialize too early.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Hmm.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: I might be right or wrong, I don't know, but I think with AI it would serve you even more to widen your horizon very early on.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: So stay generalist for a while longer.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: You're never really a generalist when you are a lawyer, but generalist within a certain practice.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Okay.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: You no longer can afford being a generalist period in this job. But this is where also our jurisdiction is going to serve us, because in other jurisdictions where the markets are much bigger, you might find a lawyer specialized in a specific kind of contract. Here, you will find someone specialized in an area. We have broader horizons, and this hedges you against the risk of having less demand on something. You still have that area, you have more practice. And it helps you in prompting AI because you have a wider horizon of knowledge, right? It helps you vet it a bit.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah. We're going to pause here, and on the other side I'm going to come back and ask you about money. When work takes less time, who gets the difference — you or the client?

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Patrick Fitzpatrick: For a long time, the deal was pretty simple. You know the law, I don't, and I pay you to help get me from point A to point B — to get me something I want or to defend me. And the robot can now produce something that looks kind of like legal work, right? What is it that you're actually selling in the age of AI?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Okay, I'll poke that question a bit.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Okay.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: The law is not to get you from A to B, period. Because if it was that easy, you wouldn't need a lawyer.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Life is complicated.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: It’s how to get from A to B getting the best deal out of it safely, with the risk assessments and so on.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Companies and clients are aware that it's not just an A to B, but they still have expectations. Getting from A to B ten years ago — or actually, let's not say ten years ago, getting from A to B yesterday when there was no AI is not the same as getting from A to B when there is AI.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Okay.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: The expectations that we're seeing is: how would you use AI? How am I benefiting as a client from the use of AI? Everyone is trying to learn in the process. 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Across industries. 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Okay.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah, there's no model answer, but they're also interested to hear what you're going to say. And each law firm could, on the same submission, make a different statement. So like I was telling you, our firm was always very invested in tools and technology. We also introduced very early on the idea of a legal project manager, especially in big transactions where the management of the different jurisdictions is a very hefty component of the exercise. We realized over time that you're using lawyers to do that, which is expensive, and it takes time from the lawyer that can do another job.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: So we have invested very early on in the concept of legal project management, and we have dedicated legal project managers. We used to, and still do in fact, include this as a value that we add  

Patrick Fitzpatrick: To the invoice?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: To the invoice and to the client. I'm doing the analogy with AI.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: The value proposition is: we have dedicated legal project managers, these are their rates, and this is a value we can add and it will be cost-efficient for you, and they are part of our firm. So there is a similar conversation with AI.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Costing you fewer hours.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Costing you fewer hours. How will I use it? But still, I'm responsible. We always need to be responsible; we need to be transparent. Transparency as to the use of AI is very important.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Do you disclose to the clients?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yes. We already disclose. The whole market, the whole world knows we are using this and that. Even the AI providers are making announcements of which law firms are working with them.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Anthropic would very much like to have a piece of the legal market.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah, of course. And it's very interesting. You haven't seen any other profession having such specific AI service providers dedicated to it. Okay, there's Harvey, there's Legora. These are dedicated legal AI tools. Have you seen the marketing campaigns?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: No.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: So Legore is using Jude Law.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Jude Law, yeah.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: And Harvey is using...

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Harvey Specter from Suits.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Maybe I'm missing it — have you seen any other AI tools that are dedicated to a certain industry?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Some finance stuff, yeah, but not...

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Not with that scale.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: With the scale or the aggression with which...

Lamyaa Gadelhak: As a law firm, if you don't use AI, you'll be prehistoric very soon.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: So in terms of daily use, this is an assumption — it has to be assumed. There are expectations about certain disclosures and certain explanations as to how this will benefit the client.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: What does that mean for you as a business? Do your billables go down?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: No.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: No, How so?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: You know, the real benefit here in AI so far has been the speed at which things are done. So I was having this discussion with a team member, and we were putting a plan as to how to deliver a certain contract to a client. So I made a plan with the lawyer and we said, "Okay, we'll sit with the client for a couple of hours to come out with the core operative concepts and terms and conditions for the agreement that we cannot come up with on our own because they're very technical and niche, so we need them to educate us on their industry. But as far as you and me are concerned, we come out with a term sheet that we put into AI, generate a draft, and then we spend the next day in a work session together to go through it, assess it, amend it, perhaps a call or two if we have further follow-ups with the client, and then send it on the third day." That would have been impossible before AI, to do all that in just three days.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Three days? That would have been a week of work. Two weeks?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Ten days.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Ten days.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah. It's not that we're cheaper, but the time it took us to deliver that would deliver cost efficiency to the client. Rather than sitting ten days working on that on and off, you have it as a client much quicker. Now I need less time, so you're taking the value as a client. Can you imagine before emails how things were, and the speed that business was happening? I changed schools because before the invention of internet, I lived in different African countries, and I was at a French school at the time. Because it wasn't a French-speaking country, after a certain age, they didn't have enough resources, so they used to send everything, even homework, to France for corrections. So as a kid, it's very difficult to just wait for the homework to come — you just don't remember anything. What if the internet was already there?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: You wouldn't have had to change schools.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: See? 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah. 

Lamyaa Gadelhak: So the speed that things are implemented is definitely also the cost-saving aspect.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: We made a fundamental mistake when we molded ourselves on a law firm

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Oh, really?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: and we told people, "We will charge you by the hour." We very quickly found out that people thought everything should take a lot less time. How is the client not saying, "This would have taken you ten days, now you're doing it in three days, it should cost me that much less"?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: The invention of the billable hour is an American invention that has been exported across the world. It suits best that American market, still does, but different pricing models do exist. There are fixed fees, there are capped fees, there are success fees, and in the first instance, there is always a discussion about the fee. So far I haven't seen AI having that impact here again, because of the local aspect. There is a lot of value in the local aspect and what we bring to the table in negotiations and with people. To be fair, there's a limitation to how much I can integrate AI to replace things I'm doing. So in our market, there is no instant, drastic impact. There is always a conversation about efficiencies, cost, time, and so on.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: So make me the case, Lamyaa, for the irreplaceable human. What can you do sitting across from a client on the other side of the table that the machine can never do? Because one of the things that stuck in my mind from a conversation we recently had was: "I see great promise in law up to the point where the bot starts talking to the bot and negotiating with the bot." In the presumption that there will always be stuff that cannot be handled robot-to-robot, that humans must be part of the law, what is the irreplaceable thing that you bring to the table?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Making the person or the client generally feel like they are cared for.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Hmm.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: And I think this is where the bot is trying to trick you into thinking that they care for you. When the bot is saying things like "Good job, that's great," this is actually trying to mimic a human connection. That's why I'm saying what is irreplaceable is a human connection: the feeling that the lawyer who is advocating for you actually does care for your rights, and you trust them with that. It's just this human connection of someone who has your back.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: I'm hiring counsel, not a drafter.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Exactly.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Yeah.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Another thing that I'm thinking about now is trying to imagine two bots negotiating. Where do they stop? There is judgment. Honestly, if I'm asking my machine to negotiate something with another machine on my behalf and I said, "I want 1, 2, 3," and the other machine is told, "I don't want to give them 1, 2, 3," how do they know how to strike a compromise? I might be wrong, but I don't see how this is achievable, because if it doesn't deliver 1, 2, 3, it has failed. So they keep bumping into each other until when? They don't have the judgment call to say, "I'll try to convince my client. My client doesn't want to give you this, but if you give me this”

Patrick Fitzpatrick: I will be able to get her to give you that.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Compromise and the ability to have some judgment on the situation and what's reasonable and what's not.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: I think there is also a measure of accountability that has to figure in there, right? Because at the end of the day, if a lawyer commits malpractice, that human and that person's professional services corporation are on the line legally — they are accountable. If I hammer in a request to Gemini or Claude or ChatGPT and an answer comes out and I rely on that answer, are they legally liable? So far, the answer is no.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah, I'm following a lot of the news coming out of the US in particular, and you're seeing a lot of cases coming out of the US about the use of AI — big, big US law firms being fined, and this other case where an AI agent appeared virtually as the lawyer in a case. Yeah, I don't remember which state it was, and the judge refused to admit it. It was a virtual session, and it was appearing as the lawyer.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: That’s insane

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah, you would say so. And I think the things that we'll keep hearing and saying "that's insane" are just going to increase, but it's building up the system and building up what will be the regulation, because we're testing it as we go. These kinds of situations, you wouldn't have imagined them. Even before AI, I remember there was a case in Canada where there was a very interesting WhatsApp chat between two people: one proposed something, and the other one sent him the thumbs-up emoji.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Okay.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: And the court considered this as a contract 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Acceptance of a contract. Wow.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Law is a very horizontal topic; it cuts across a lot of disciplines. Some countries have issued legislative acts, and others not yet. But again, it's a work in progress, and it should be, in my view, designed as something that is going to be updated and revised quite regularly and with a lot of flexibility because of the speed that things are moving. But something like weaponry, where AI is banned from being used — this is an important discussion. Where can it be used? How can it be used? When used, what are the factors that should be taken into account, and who is accountable? Those are, as a starting point of discussion, things that need to be addressed.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Are we having those conversations as an Egyptian legal community?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: We're having curious discussions. It's an exciting discussion. 

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Really?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah, because it's a tool, a very important tool. I don't remember when was the last time I sat with anyone, be it in a legal setup or outside, where AI was not part of the discussion. It's topic du jour. "What did you try? How did it work? Was it helpful using it on Egyptian laws? It completely made this up.” There was a discussion where it completely made up an Egyptian law. But there was also a discussion about spotting something that everyone else missed. You see?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Goes both ways.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: So it's still an exciting one, and there is a lot of curiosity, which is very, very healthy.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Curiosity more than fear in the community right now.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: I didn't sense fear, except in people fearing over what will happen to the development of the younger lawyers — if they rely too much on it, they trust it too much. This is the aspect of fear. But the main sentiment is curiosity about how best to use it.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: That's interesting. Talk to me for a second Lamyaa about the concept of privilege. I ask ChatGPT for some legal advice...

Lamyaa Gadelhak: They're not bound by attorney-client privilege, and this is one of the reasons they're not accountable. Actually, there is also a case from the US — if you're interested in that, you should follow what's happening in the US. The speed at which things are being tested is very interesting. A person decided they don't need a lawyer, and they used their AI chat or bot to deliver the service that a lawyer would have, and they included information in that chat that became part of the public domain. And so their defense before the court was that this was privileged information. AI is not your lawyer. It is not bound by attorney-client privilege, and this information that you divulge is in the public domain now. And it got used against that person.

Actually, this is one of the reasons that we received training. Baker McKenzie is very focused on doing it right. When AI was rolled out to us, part of the training was how to use it in a way that does not hurt our clients. There is a distinction in our AI that there is a work icon and a web icon. Whenever I'm using client-specific information, I'm not allowed to use the web icon, and I have to stick to the work icon only, because this restricts the information put here to our own firm and our own use, and doesn't go to the public domain.

____________

Patrick Fitzpatrick: I'm not going to hold you out as the expert on AI regulation — nobody is. If you look around the world, when it comes to technology and a lot of other things, but let’s talk about technology specifically. The European Union regulates first, the US probably litigates first, China wants to control first. How should we, from a public policy point of view, be looking at AI? Is Egypt a lab for experimentation? Do we need guardrails?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: It's an interesting question. I think the first thing that I have to emphasize is that I'm not a technology lawyer or even close to one. So I think there are two components I would raise. Before those components, what's the most valuable commodity nowadays?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: No

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Data.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Data. Yeah.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah, this is the most valuable commodity, and it requires protection. It will just become more and more valuable.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: So data privacy.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Data privacy, data sovereignty, and data centers. As a project lawyer, I wrote about it and where this is going and what we should be looking at, and it's part of the regulations that should be taken into account. Something as simple — maybe it doesn't cross your mind — but hosting your data in a data center that is not in your jurisdiction, what does that mean? And the sovereignty and so on. And the impact of data centers on the environment — the power component is crazy. But does it mean that it shouldn't be done? No, it should be done. But again, it's part of the bigger supply chain equation. So there is protection of the population. Think of it as a transaction with data in the middle. Someone owns it, someone trades it, someone stores it, someone uses it. And this whole business ecosystem is being built around data as a commodity, and it is also a weapon.

I think I read somewhere that in the UK they realized that they have been using technology models on public transportation — Chinese ones — that when tested in the UK over time, they realized that they could be controlled remotely from China. So in an ideal scenario, each country would want to make sure it develops its own as a means of protection. But what it takes to deliver that is way beyond my imagination. I don't know. There's a lot of potential, there's a lot of room for people to grow and start things. But where does it take us? It's a race that has started quite some time ago. But from an Egyptian perspective, I would say if you're not developing it, then you should make sure you protect it. And protecting is not not using it, because you have to use it. But how do you use it and still be safe from it?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: I think that's one area where Saudi and the UAE have a jump on us right now: data sovereignty, data privacy, the whole concept of data embassies. They're much more at the bleeding edge of this type of discussion than we are today.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: We could use a lot more speed in things, and a lot more assessment and studying. But there's a process. We have less flexibility, and it's a function of the legal regime that we have. We're a republic.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: I like that answer. I'd love to know, of the many tangible things that you've helped bring into the world — all the projects that you've advised — what's your favorite?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Kids included?

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Separate the kids. We all love our kids the most, right? At work, what's the project that you're most proud of?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: I'll mention one at work and one off work.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Okay.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: I've worked on a lot of the projects that are in the Sokhna road, but the project that stands out is my first project.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: The first one? Yeah. Okay.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Which was the Egyptian LNG project. It was the biggest at the time, still remains quite significant, quite complex. Learned a lot. It was my introduction to projects and project finance. I think what I learned on that project is unmatched.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: What is Egyptian LNG?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Liquefied natural gas. We were representing the sponsors at the time, and it was project finance. There was government ownership, minority ownership, and it's quite a complex process. Not every country has an LNG train. The fact that we have an LNG project in Egypt contributes to the narrative that was later developed of being an energy hub.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: What about outside of work?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: So outside, many of you already know that back in 2011, I was always very fascinated by renewable energy — solar, wind, and so on. At the time it hadn't picked up for many reasons, one of them the technology being too expensive compared to subsidized fuel and so on. Later, a few years later, a group of friends of mine started a company called KarmSolar, which is a homegrown solar energy company that has a very beautiful success story. And I was one of the first investors. I was heavily involved at the beginning, but much less so as it grew, and I'm very proud of it. Just contributing to a very beautiful story is something I'm very happy with as well.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: You told me once that you did not set out to become a lawyer, but you might want to be a farmer at one point in time, 

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Fallaha [farmer] to be very specific.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: If you look ahead a certain number of years down the road, what do you do in retirement?

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Every lawyer I know who enjoys being a lawyer, I think one of their characteristics that has led to them being a lawyer is the need to be constantly intellectually challenged. So retirement for me is not going to be the classic retirement as in sitting and not doing anything, because I just can't. I see myself perhaps continuing these entrepreneurial experiences. I don't see myself ever stopping being a lawyer fully, but stopping being this full-time lawyer, definitely. It's quite a hectic job, and probably somewhere green with some horses, because I love horses. Reading or writing... It's a bit full for a retirement, right? Thinking about it now, it seems like I'm... It's a problem.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: It's more like changing clothes — taking off a suit, but putting on another full set of clothes.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Yeah, maybe I need to rethink that. We'll see. As long as it's slow. It's not about not doing, it's just I think the pace. I need a slower pace if I'm retired.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Lamyaa, thank you so much for joining us today.

Lamyaa Gadelhak: Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. It's always interesting having a discussion with you. Thank you very much.

Patrick Fitzpatrick: Thank you so much.