Transcript of Beyond Billable - Driving Conversations with Suzanne van der Klip

Pim Betist: So, you ready?

Suzanne van der Klip: I’m ready.

Pim Betist: Good, let’s do it. Welcome to Driving Conversations.

Suzanne van der Klip: Thank you for having me, Pim.

Pim Betist: Let’s take off.

Suzanne van der Klip: Warn me when the singing starts, when we hit the karaoke part.

Pim Betist: Oh you’ll notice.

Suzanne van der Klip: You will too.

(Both laugh)

Pim Betist: Alright, let’s get you introduced. Can you tell our audience a little about yourself and your background?

Suzanne van der Klip: How long do you have?

Pim Betist: About forty minutes ;-)

Suzanne van der Klip: I’ll keep it short. I started as a corporate lawyer. First at another firm, then twenty three years ago I joined A&O in the M&A team. I have a creative streak that I did not fully use in corporate work. There is creativity in law, but repetitive tasks bothered me. That pulled me toward fixing inefficiencies.

Suzanne van der Klip: Before legal tech, that meant standardizing contracts, drafting templates, and improving due diligence, which is inherently inefficient. Through that I encountered the first legal tech tools.

Pim Betist: What year are we talking about?

Suzanne van der Klip: 2016. Early days. I loved it. In 2017 we started an innovation team.

Pim Betist: What made it difficult at first?

Suzanne van der Klip: You go to partners and say you want to do this. They were supportive and trusted my instincts, but I had to do it next to the day job. It began as a passion project. Sometimes I was energized, sometimes a bit defeated when things did not work. The day job was a safe harbor. Over time the role grew and I built a strong team.

Pim Betist: Do you remember the first time you saw a legal gen AI tool really work?Suzanne van der Klip: Wow, yes. I had been experimenting with raw LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude. Then I saw a legal AI answer that changed my view. It was mind boggling how it sped up access to the right sources. I was giddy.

Pim Betist: When was this?

Suzanne van der Klip: January 2023. Very early. A&O Shearman’s innovation team got early access to Harvey. I think we were the first big collaboration. It invigorated me.

Suzanne van der Klip: The team grew, and I joined the global effort to build our own solution. Being on the build side teaches you a lot.

Pim Betist: What did you build?

Suzanne van der Klip: A contract negotiation solution inside Microsoft Word. It brought together precedents and used AI for drafting, reviewing, and helping in negotiations.

Pim Betist: Contract Matrix?

Suzanne van der Klip: Exactly.

Pim Betist: You built that?

Suzanne van der Klip: No, I did not. Very clever people did, but I was definitely at one point very involved in the team and we were joined up, because I had done so much contract drafting and negotiating and drafted so many templates from my earlier innovation quests or efficiency quests. So it was just such a natural fit for me to join that effort.

Suzanne van der Klip: I have since left A&O Shearman. That gave me time to explore. I spoke with many startups and was impressed by the legal innovation ecosystem. The best fit for me was Legora. I love their technology and the team, and their stance on collaborative legal AI. I could see in the results that they listen to users. Things felt streamlined. So I am joining Legora.

Pim Betist: Good for you, and good for them. Many firms and legal departments are setting up innovation teams. What are your lessons for them?

Suzanne van der Klip: First, get leadership backing, not just sound bites. Real support, including investment. Earn it by aligning with firm strategy. Beat the drum repeatedly. Share vision, show tangible demos, and frame everything as what is in it for them.

Pim Betist: And for lawyer adoption?

Suzanne van der Klip: Don’t start talking about functionality. I think so many people get this wrong. You get nobody’s attention with functionality. If you have the opportunity to meet with a team, walk in the door with, “this is what’s in it for you.” Show them how they can do their work more efficiently. Come prepared with a really good and relevant use case for them. Otherwise you’ll lose their attention. And to be fair, they’re busy, they have a hundred other things on their plate that day. It’s really about building trusted relationships across the firm. Sometimes people will sit and listen to me simply because they know me and are too polite to brush me off. But you can use that trust to get your foot in the door.

Pim Betist: When we zoom out a little bit, what do you see happening in the market? What are some big trends?

Suzanne van der Klip: I don’t have all the answers about where we’re going. Nobody does. But I do have some big thoughts. One is how much value tools can bring, but also how confusing it can be for users whose day jobs are very different from those of an innovation team. They struggle to know when to use which tool. They don’t always have their logins, or each time they log in it’s a completely different environment, and they don’t have the time to learn it all.

What I’ve noticed is that if you can give them a platform that offers a wide range of functionality. From storing datasets to prebuilt workflows, to building your own workflows and playbooks.That’s a crowd pleaser. It means you can tailor specific use cases for different teams, whether tax or real estate, and it all happens within one familiar platform. Over time, users build trust in it, and it creates stickiness.

Pim Betist: Is it the end of point solutions?

Suzanne van der Klip: No. I love the startup community. But users get lost in many tools and logins. A platform that offers datasets, workflows, and playbooks can be a crowd pleaser. The future is collaboration. Platforms integrating best in class point solutions through tool calling. Point solutions must bring unique value, or lawyers will replicate it with prompt coding. Raise the bar and be distinct.

Pim Betist: In my trainings, only a quarter use legal AI. Many use raw models like ChatGPT or Claude. Why so slow?

Suzanne van der Klip: Raw assistants are fine for personal tasks. For professional work you need tools built for legal, with security, confidentiality, and fit for purpose prompting under the hood. And if you use a legal AI tool, the output is always going to be better and more fit for purpose, which means your prompting can be more natural language because hidden underneath that is already so much prompt engineering.

To me, the most intriguing thing isn’t just the assistant — it’s the workflows and playbooks. The fact that Legora can open up your Microsoft Word environment and the tooling already in there is a huge time saver. I also use it as a way to educate myself: I look at prebuilt workflows, see what they’re doing, and then customize them for my own use. That creates incredible value and stickiness. I can’t believe that some people only use the raw assistants when they’re in the legal profession.

Pim Betist: Let's talk about the more for less problem. Both law firms and legal departments have this same problem. And most legal departments are super small. The average is like, what three or four people?

Suzanne van der Klip: Yeah. And they have so much to do. Can I just say hats off to legal departments everywhere? They have to cover so much — with all the regulation coming out of the Benelux and beyond — and at the same time handle the contracting.

Pim Betist: With law firms, there’s often the argument that efficiency tools reduce billable hours. But for in-house counsel it’s different, isn’t it?

Suzanne van der Klip: Exactly. In-house lawyers are actually saving time they might otherwise have to outsource to a law firm, simply because they don’t have the bandwidth to do everything themselves. In that sense, AI can take over work that would normally be sent outside, saving money on external fees. For law firms there’s always the debate about billable hours, but for in-house teams the return is much more straightforward.

Pim Betist: So what should in-house teams be doing to adopt legal AI effectively?

Suzanne van der Klip: Many of them are overwhelmed. They’re juggling regulation, contracting, and now this extra work stream of evaluating tools. Often they just respond to whichever vendor emails them first. What they really need is to pause and create a strategy. Sit down, list all their use cases, identify the pain points, and then proactively reach out to solution providers. That way they’re making deliberate choices instead of reacting.

And because in-house teams cover such a wide scope, it makes sense to start with a platform. Then, for specific needs that the platform doesn’t cover, you can add targeted point solutions. Think of it as building a tech stack: start with a solid base, then layer on top where you need extra depth.

Pim Betist: Let’s look ahead. What do you think will happen in the next few years, both for law firms and legal departments?

Suzanne van der Klip: That’s always a tough question. First, I think we sometimes forget to stop and appreciate what we already have. The tools available right now are incredible. We’ve been waiting a long time for this moment, and it’s here. I want to enjoy that before jumping too far ahead.

But if I look forward, I see both opportunity and challenge. For big law firms, the traditional leverage model will change. You don’t need armies of junior lawyers anymore. A few good people, supported by powerful AI tools, can do what used to require dozens. That shift favors boutique and mid-sized firms, who are less dependent on leverage and can be more agile.

Pim Betist: That could mean more smaller firms springing up.

Suzanne van der Klip: Exactly. For years, the strength of big law was its ability to staff large matters with huge teams. That was comfortable and powerful. But if AI can handle much of the repetitive work, the playing field evens out. Boutique firms with real sector expertise, combined with smart use of AI, have a big opportunity. Big law will need to transform faster than they might expect.

Pim Betist: And what about junior lawyers? I get questions from them all the time — “Do I need to worry?” I always say lean forward. Experiment. If your firm does not buy a tool, invest in one yourself and learn.

Suzanne van der Klip: The plain vanilla work is at risk. But there are parts of legal practice that are highly specific and niche, where you need deep knowledge, the right connections, or insights that the market doesn’t generally see. That kind of boardroom-level advisory work — the decisions that can make or break a company — will not disappear. Humans will continue to be valued for their judgment and experience.

Pim Betist: This has been such a fun conversation. Who should I drive around with next?

Suzanne van der Klip: Well, this is a little selfish of me, but one person I would love to hear more from is Max Junestrand at Legora. He’s incredibly smart, and I’ve listened to almost every podcast I could find with him in it. For purely selfish reasons, so I can listen to another podcast interview I’d say him. Another person I’d recommend is Jonathan Williams at Legora. He’s insightful, full of ideas, and brings a lot of fun to the table.

Pim Betist: That’s great. Thanks for the suggestions.

Suzanne van der Klip: Thank you for having me. This has been so lovely. Honestly, I could drive around like this for hours.

Pim Betist: Same here. Maybe we’ll do a second one in a year and see how many of your predictions came true.

Suzanne van der Klip: The proof will be in the pudding. But I’ll admit, I’m always hesitant about predictions. I don’t want to get boxed in by my own thinking. Some people make sweeping statements about the future and then feel locked into them. I’d rather keep an open, learning mindset. When new aspects emerge, I want to be able to look at them with fresh eyes and rethink.

Pim Betist: That makes sense. You can make predictions and still keep an open mind. It’s more about recognizing the trends and currents, then figuring out how to navigate them.

Suzanne van der Klip: Exactly. It’s not one straight rocket path. It’s a set of different currents converging. The key is to understand how they flow and find your way through them.

Pim Betist: Surfing the waves.

Suzanne van der Klip: Surfing the waves, yes.

Pim Betist: Thank you so much, Suzanne.

Suzanne van der Klip: Thank you, Pim. This was wonderful. And I have to say, I love this fancy car.