Daniel Farrar is a seasoned Fortune 500-trained CEO with over 30 years of experience at the helm of global companies. Currently the CEO of Assembly Software, he most recently led a global UCaaS and Cloud Services business after serving as CEO at two leading B2B SaaS enterprises. Daniel holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from Harvard University. He has been recognized as “The Most Inspiring CEO to Watch” and has won Gold Medals for “Visionary CEO of the Year” and “Best Company to Work for in SaaS.” Additionally, he was awarded the GE Capital Presidents Award. Daniel is a member of the Forbes Business Council and actively contributes to Authority Magazine, Law Technology Today, and the Forbes Technology Council.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-farrar-8a7474/
Company: Assembly Software
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company
Daniel Farrar: My name is Daniel Farrar and I am the CEO of Assembly Software. I have degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Design, and Material Science) and a Masters in Business Administration with more than 30 years of experience leading and growing international companies and platforms value creation strategies to above market growth, successful outcomes, exits and transitions with a heavy emphasis on SaaS & Cloud technology platforms.
Assembly Software is a cloud-based technology platform focused on the legal technology vertical providing a world class case management solution. In 2017, Trialworks and Needles, two leading case management software companies, joined forces to create Assembly. Combining resources and experience allowed for more meaningful investments, robust product development, and world class technology leadership and management strength.
Our flagship cloud-based case management product is called Neos. Built on Microsoft Azure, Neos can handle everything from case intake through to settlement or litigation managing all the required and necessary workflow steps for laws firms of one lawyer to AM Law 100. It is highly configurable, extensible and scalable with a library of applications, advanced analytics, digital payment enablement, and an impressive embedded Ai functionality to drive increases in productivity, efficiency and margin improvement in size firm.
What specific areas of your business have been most impacted by AI, and how?
Daniel Farrar: In short, time savings. Measured in productivity, efficiency, and margin enhancements, while generating more capacity with in our clients business. Our cloud-based product Neos has NeosAI embedded in the workflow solution.
•Time Savings Stats: Assembly is committed and dedicated to continually learning from our customers. As part of this commitment, we engaged over 60 law firms as beta partners to provide critical feedback on demonstrated opportunities for productivity and time-savings within their normal business operations. Customers told us what they needed and wanted from AI.
From this experience, we listened, observed, and learned the many use cases of productivity and time-savings as demonstrated by our beta partners. Examples of these include:
• AI-Powered Document Summarization: Eliminate time-consuming document reviews and gain instant understanding of content with NeosAI’s automated summarization capabilities. This can save your firm up to 10 hours per case.
• AI-Powered Document Generation: Transform document creation by automating research and repetitive drafting, boosting efficiency and ensuring consistency. NeosAI can save your team up to 6 hours per case.
• AI-Powered Document Extraction: Streamline data entry and ensure accuracy by automating the extraction of key details from documents, saving up to 20 hours per case.
• AI-Powered Dynamic Forms: NeosAI’s adaptable forms solution allows your firm to customize and streamline critical processes, enhancing productivity and control, while providing the firm the opportunity to be the final approver of all outbound documents to clients.
• Integrating NeosAI with our standard workflow automation provides further productivity and efficiency to your law firm’s daily case management operations
• Further productivity opportunities can result from the NeosAI integration with our Advanced Analytics microservice that helps a firm to understand its gross and net realization rates derived from the utilization and productivity of its legal workforce.
How are you ensuring ethical considerations are taken into account in your use of AI?
Daniel Farrar: From a security and data point of view, at Assembly and with NeosAI, we maintain a strict zero data retention (ZDR). Meaning we do not store any data after it has served the immediate purpose in the workflow requested action or task. All data is deleted as soon as it is no longer required verses saving it for a future use or repurpose. Assembly also employs Microsoft standards and securities of ChatGPT, the developer of OpenAI, who spearheaded the ZDR standards and policies in its application programming interface (API) calls.
On the ethical dimensions and challenges to consider for AI there are several and many, with more ahead as AI gains in intelligence and in AI-IQ. Below are some key areas many standards organizations and committees are wrestling with on the ethical considerations for AI.
• Governance and an AI code of ethics are emerging at the top of many global companies to do lists. Creating the need for policies, usage and conduct commensurate with safe and secure practices, humane and eco-appropriate approaches to AI. Having a strong AI code of ethics can include elements of the avoidance of bias, user privacy, and their data, and mitigation of environmental risks.
• Transparency: AI is extremely resourceful, ever-learning and clever. Its voice is not always intelligible nor immediately known to humans despite where the input originated. Like people and opinions, AI is definitely not neutral in any discourse: nearly all AI-based decisions, save those based on massive factually correct data inputs, are in some way susceptible to inaccuracies, open to discriminatory results, as well as embedded or inserted bias. These need to be taken into account as you consider security and safe guarding provisions for the data in use.
• Data Bias, A significant ethical concern is the potential for biases in data, due to inaccuracies, lack of or limited information, lack of transparency in algorithms, driving misrepresentation based on improper, omitted, or limited sample sets, and the risk of a plethora of misuse.
What advice would you give to other CEOs looking to integrate AI into their business?
Daniel Farrar: Tech CEOs have a unique set of of lenses on the world and how rapidly it changes both in driving the change and enabling the next generation to built upon it. Generative AI is and will become a great equalizer and competitive advantage across multiple industries and verticals. It will become an essential building block in every code-based technology and product-led business strategy or offering.
Every company, whether a tier one supplier or primary provider in hard goods or software, will require and ultimately embrace AI as a fundamental part of the competitive advantage. It is not a choice it will be inevitable and ever changing as a requirement to building a competitive advantage. Maintaining the advantage will be compounded further by the incredible speed with which AI learns and goes beyond the water marks for performance being set daily.
Every function will be impacted creating challenges and opportunities in GTM strategies, segment analysis, customer persona development, product-led growth through to operational delivery for every product and service.
CEOs must continue to ask where to apply investment and personnel resources with relentless priority and focus to make the highest impact for customer acquisition, market share and revenue growth.
How do you see AI evolving in your industry over the next 5 years?
Daniel Farrar: The future of NeosAI and its roadmap will undoubtedly evolve and change with the speed and capabilities of AI, but their are a few items on our roadmap as we look ahead to a multi-generational product plan and approach to AI.
More IVOC. Assembly will continue our NeosAI beta program with more firms as we collect and learn more about your firm’s use cases and productivity and automation needs. We welcome new beta partners as the market consumes more of our NeosAI, to the extent of developing carve-out teams that represent specific case matter expertise
Smarter Toolsets. Continued expansion of AI driven workflows for increased “smart” automation and improved firm productivity.
Enhanced our Advanced Analytics and Data Employment.
• NeosAI data results for improved user experience as the workflow and data presentations functions evolve and learn.
• Dynamically generated forms from documents that automatically recognize key value pairs, and stores the data directly in Neos saving time entering data and provides more robust reporting than ever before.
• Extending document generation, extraction and summary models to do even more with the data that already exists in Neos.
• Data Interrogation (Future state – 2025): Evolve and extend Natural Language to quickly find relevant information and insights into cases and intakes to include use of Small Language Models (SLM)
