Ex-Quinn Emanuel partner Christopher Kercher on building an AI-native litigation boutique — and why BigLaw's partner-flight problem is about to accelerate

Speaker 2: A good Talk rest of to you soon. Goodbye. Talk soon. Let me tell you about Figma. Agents meet the canvas. Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context. And let me also tell you about Console. Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of ITHR and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets. And our next guest is here live with us in person. Good to have you. Thank you so much for coming on the show. To have you guys Please introduce yourself for everyone. Absolutely. So Chris Kircher, the founder of Kircher Law. Yeah. Before that, I spent seventeen years at Quinn Emanuel. Most feared law firm. Most feared law firm. Had a great run there. Represented Elon Musk with your

Speaker 7: previous guest, Alex Spyro in the Twitter case. Also represented him on his comp case. Yeah. I I represented Citadel in the GameStop, you know, Memestock saga. I did a lot for Lehman Brothers and got very into AI a few years ago and saw, okay, this is pretty obvious how this can be used in the work we do. I started the AI and data analytics group at Quinn. And then in July, I thought, okay, it's time to take this to the next level, take my talents to, I guess, Greenwich, Connecticut and to build my own firm. But it's been a blast. I've got five lawyers down. I actually have gifts for you guys. Let me see. Wow. So I made... You know, one of the things I made for my lawyers when they joined were baseball cards Okay. With their stats and Well, look your pictures. Very efficient way. And if you look at the back, you've got your... Oh, This is the friend of the firm series. The the lawyer series is slightly different, but wanted to give you I

Speaker 2: love the stats on the back. This is very, very detailed here. Friend of the firm. Let's go. It even has my head on here. Correct. Nailed it. Nice. Friends of the firm. I love it. Awesome. Thank you. Yes. So

Speaker 1: do you feel like the, you know, you just kind of locked into the perfect timing with this where you built the beginning of your career, you know, landing all these super high profile cases at one of the most high profile firms and then AI comes along and now you can take the entrepreneurial route but not feel like you need to scale to like thousands of people? Like, was that always like like, for me, I I love this business because we have like 11 full time people. Like, it's nice that we can all be under one small roof and I enjoy that.

Speaker 7: But but how did you think about the right time to to take the entrepreneurial step? Yeah, great question. I mean, was having a blast at Quinn and working on the A. I. Stuff there, but actually ended up teaching a two week class at Stanford Law School last spring. And, you know, wandering around the Bay Area where it's even more AI filled than New York where I'm from, I thought, okay, there's a real moment in time here. I'm 47. So when I was in college, the Internet was rolling out broadband and, you know, I kind of missed that pitch that the, you know, the .combust was my junior year or so. Went to law school, loved my legal career, but I thought when AI, you know, blew up, like, I've seen this movie before. Yeah. And and I think I can take my now experience and expertise and use what I've learned about AI to build a new kind of firm. We don't need as many people. Yeah. We can have much tighter teams, much less coordination tax, especially in something like litigation where, you know, coordination is so critical. And and so, you know, find the people who are also really AI pilled, who are in litigation

Speaker 2: Mhmm. Who who just wanna figure out how do we do this. Yeah. So it's been a blast. What is the future of self representation look like? There there are examples of people going to small claims court and standing up in front of the judge and representing themselves. It's not recommended usually, but it does happen. I believe it's legal, I think, to do that. Is that right? It is. It's probably like institutional 1% of cases, less than point 1% of cases or something. But take me out into the future. Is it gonna be 10%? Because people are gonna be like, I can just use AI, or do you think that's not gonna change anything? I guess the way to think about it is the the marginal cost of actually initiating litigation has been dropped to near zero. Sure. Right? Before,

Speaker 7: you'd have to write a 30 page complaint or whatever and that was hard to do. Now the AI can do a serviceable job. Yeah. There will be problems with the courts with everybody flooding in with, you know, what they call pro se complaints Sure. For people who are self representing. Mhmm. And when when the new models come out, I use them and I think for a second, my god. It's over. Why does anyone need me? But then I remember, oh, because, you know, first of all, going to court Yep. Advocating in front of a judge, that's not going away. Sure. That's a unique human skill. You can't, you know, grow that in an AI pipeline. Yeah. Advocate... Counseling clients. Right? When a client has a big problem, when I have a a medical issue, I can look up, okay. Why am I coughing like this? And Mhmm. Chad or Claude can give me an answer. But if I am really concerned, I'm gonna go see my doctor. Yep. And so when I was teaching the Stanford class, I actually taught it again in the fall. And one of the students came up to me and said, so you're just, like, talking to it? Like, you're just asking questions? I can do that. And I thought, can you? Like, you know, let's let's... Who who who is going to use Claude better, on a litigation task? Me, another litigator, or someone who has never litigated before Mhmm. And has no idea

Speaker 1: The pitfalls. What... Right. The pitfalls, the strategy, the opportunities, all the thing you ask ask an LLM about something you don't know nothing about. You're like, this is, you know, the most incredible genius. Then you ask it about something that, you know, even trivial for me. Like if I ask it about anything surfing related, I'm like, this makes... This is like wrong in a bunch of different ways. The exception would be design. People with no design skills, they go to the LLMs and they just get these beautiful designs. Words.

Speaker 2: It's always like the worst.

Speaker 7: Yeah. It's... I... You know, I was joking that, like, you know, that people make fun of it's the next word predictor or whatever. Like, when you've given it all the words you have, the next word is the one you need, you know, the next concept or the next idea. So you can extend your knowledge but to make huge leaps is really hard. The legal industry right now feels like all the lawyers that I talk to, like lawyers,

Speaker 1: at least in my network, tend to be like pretty pretty smart, pretty pragmatic, logical, they are... You know, we're in the technology industry so these lawyers that are working in the tech industry, they believe in technology. I don't meet a lot of lawyers that are like, I just I don't think this AI thing is gonna be that big, you know? But it feels like there's like structural reasons why certain groups can't do what what is sort of necessary, right? And so I would say like, you feel like this is an amazing opportunity for you because you can go find that. I feel like most lawyers, the smart ones, should already be like AI pilled and then you have to assess like are they gonna show agency themselves to like figure out new systems and ways to use these tools. But then you also have the structural advantage where you're building from the ground up with this technology in mind versus thinking like, man, we have, you know, 3,000 people on payroll and we got to figure out how to, you know, navigate through this. You're just starting fresh.

Speaker 7: I I mean, all those things, you know, starting from the systems you're building on, is it better to retrofit AI into these legacy systems, or should we just start from scratch? The lawyer training, you know, people are coming at it from all different perspectives. Some people look at it like, oh, AI, that's interesting. I'll maybe get some time this weekend to dabble versus let's use it on everything as much as we can. It's literally super intelligence. Yeah. Where, you know, where can we use super intelligence in our practice? And that's hard at any big enterprise because you have committees, you have a lot of, you know, stakeholders who have reasonable concerns, but the technology is moving so fast that, have to sort of slow it down to do it by consensus

Speaker 1: was was hard. It is hard. And so doing it myself, not as hard. What what's your pitch assuming that you want to let you know, assuming you want your most high profile cases to be in front of you, what's your pitch to clients to to go with you versus the... You know, you're dealing with a really big problem Mhmm. And you have to litigate or or you're being sued, you're not... Your first thought, at least for the biggest companies in the world, is I want to save some money and go with the AI native firm. So what's your pitch? So that's it. I think clients initially hear AI, okay, that's cheaper.

Speaker 7: I like super intelligence. You know, we're giving a super intelligent technology on your problem that is inherently, you know, a question of intelligence. It's how do we, argue this point? How do we find other arguments? How do we shape the narrative? What really happened here? And how do we lay all that out? So a a lot of engineers look at at litigation problems, and they say, looks vaguely like a math, you know, logic problem. I think we can engineer away the lawyers. But when you get to the end of a lawsuit, there's just a bunch of arguments about what words mean Mhmm. And what the significance significance of an event is, who's more credible. And and so John Quinn, always would say, you know, the the side that wins is usually the side that figures out what matters first. Mhmm. Super intelligence is incredible at helping you figure out what matters quickly and and to to develop on top of it. Or or I imagine even, you know, in in cybersecurity,

Speaker 1: like every company is facing this right now where, like, somewhere in your software supply chain, there was this one tiny vulnerability, and it feels like the same thing could apply to law where it's like finding that one detail that you can like sink your teeth into and make and ideally make the whole issue about that ends up being I imagine like a way to win. And it feels like AI but but the funny thing is that both sides now have that same access to intelligence, but it's like... So it becomes who can use it the best. Absolutely.

Speaker 7: I mean, had a case in the pandemic, $6,000,000,000 hotel deal where a buyer had agreed or our client had agreed to spend 6,000,000,000 in hotels in the fourth quarter of of twenty nineteen to close in the first quarter of twenty twenty. That deal became impossible to finance in the pandemic. And usually, you know, those those deals are hard to get around, but, the issue was they closed the hotels. The the seller had closed the hotels in the pandemic. That was our defense. What did you want us to do? But the contract said you had to run the business in the ordinary course, unless you have consent of the buyer. And we hung on that and we won on that and it was it was a huge deal. And in every case, there's there is a way. Mhmm. Super intelligence helps you find it faster Sure. And and and come up with more, you know, creative solutions for clients because no client actually wants to go all the way. No one comes into my office to say, I'm here because I want to win a Right? They have a problem and it usually goes through courts or other, you know, arbitration or some other process, but they don't really wanna, you know, win the lawsuit.

Speaker 2: They'd rather just win their problem or solve their problem. Sber was saying that he knows some people that do just want one. He he does. He... He's the exception. He knows some people that are just like, I love love winning and I wanna sue everyone. And then he said he knows some people that don't wanna sue anyone. Can you help me understand what's going on? What happened with Wheel? Wheel Gershaw's ninety five year old law firm went dissolved a couple weeks ago. The Wall Street Journal here says it was a talent war, a record year for partner turnover, helped bring down Wheel and is forcing similar firms to make changes to compete.

Speaker 7: Are you familiar with the story? Can you give me more context? What... Help me understand what's going on. I followed it closely. I'm fascinated by it coming out of BigLaw. Yeah. BigLaw firms have many of the features of banks, but without the the FDIC, without bank holidays Sure. Where you you get a run dynamic where, the revenue is is typically concentrated in a small number of so called rainmakers, and you have a ton of infrastructure underneath that. And so... When they leave, they take the revenue with them. They take the revenue. As opposed to... You would assume if you're sharing revenue with just a couple people and somebody steps out, that's more for you, but in this case, it's less. And and especially in that run dynamic think this person's leaving, Jordy's leaving. If I'm the last one here responsible for thousands of employees Yeah. I don't have that much business. You know, nobody... You know, I don't I don't wanna deal with that. Right? I'd just rather go down the street to fix Why it for fixed

Speaker 1: have lawyers seemingly having to give so much power to individual partners? Like, you would think that over the years, the power would shift from independent, you know, partners to the firm. Yeah. But it seems to be if you can just take your clients and go Mhmm. That's a crazy dynamic. And I would expect this is like the first story of many as people realize, hey, can jump ship, spin up my own practice, maintain... Even if I maintain 80% of my book, but I have way less cost, I'm instantly making, you know, more money and it feels like you could have this massive reshuffling of big law over the next ten years. Yeah. I think historically,

Speaker 7: big law firms paid in what was called lockstep. So if we were the same year and we were partners and we were, you know, contributing Yeah. We'd get paid about the same. You've seen an explosion of free agency in in law. So people going from one firm to another with big guaranteed contracts or or or deals. So there's less loyalty. There's less like we grew up in this together, so we're going to save the firm and more. Well, you know, these guys all got here three weeks ago, so anyone can turn over any time. So there's not that same level of investment. They'll bring their team, they'll bring their associates, you know, there may be their other partners who help them service those clients. But do they need the whole firm? You know, probably not. Think... What is the base

Speaker 2: case for a lawyer leaving a firm taking their business with them? Is it they're gonna take 50%, 80%? Because there's plenty of clients that they might like their particular lawyer, but also they might just say, oh, we already have this relationship. I haven't talked to him in a while because we're not doing an active litigation or something. So, we'll just give whoever the firm gives us. I think litigation is very different. Litigation is episodic. It's it's

Speaker 7: spiky. Sure. You you don't know when someone's gonna have the big one. Usually, you know, most people have one, but the company lifetime in a lifetime. In transactional work, if you're representing private equity companies doing deals, I think that tends to be much more stable and that's who they're looking to. I... It tends to be... Okay. So so if they leave, are they taking 80%, 90%, a 100% sometimes? Probably a pretty good chunk. Yeah. Especially if the client looks at it and sees, well, I don't know if that firm is gonna still be there. Sure. My other options are still gonna be there because everybody's like a bank run Yeah. You know, looking for safer grounds. So you may end up in a situation where, you know, like in o eight, o nine, everybody's looking for the JPMorgan or or, you know, Bank of America or whatever

Speaker 2: of law. Yeah. And and is that emerging already? Is there... Is it too soon to call it? Is that... It's hard to understand.... There might be like a barbell effect where you get a whole bunch of smaller, more independent, more agile firms than one bigger big winner take all power. But also, you might just wind up with a bunch of diffuse smaller law firms. I I like the diffuse, but especially in litigation where conflicts are a problem. Sure. A giant law firm That's right. Partners have conflicts with one another. Historically,

Speaker 7: you would trade it off because you wanted access to hundreds of associates. But now if you don't necessarily need hundreds of associates, that trade looks different. I think the thing I'll watch is in law firm economics, most firms, pay out a majority of their comp in January. Mhmm. And so people may be... I don't know, but they may be at firms kinda holding on until the end of the year to see how that shakes out. But there tends to be a lot of free agency in the first quarter, and that might be the next sort of destabilizing event there is to be one.

Speaker 2: When you're working on a bet the company moment, how are you puzzling together all the different strategies and how they fit together? There's, you know, companies that are they actively have to have earnings. They have to do PR. This founder might need to go on podcast. They might also need to testify. There's discovery. There's so many different things going on. How three sixty is your approach?

Speaker 7: It's three sixty, you know, all three sixty. And that's actually one of the one of the great uses of AI is to build, like, stable case knowledge Mhmm. Where you can lay out, here's the client's objective, here are the constraints that we're living within, here are the risks that we're concerned about, so that everything you do on the case is informed by those things and the AI can remind you, you know, don't forget this person's testifying, you know, in this other case next week or, you know, they have an earn out coming up and so maybe they don't wanna, you know, rock the boat now, all that kind of stuff. That's fine. Yeah. Well, thank you. Last question.

Speaker 1: What... I feel like you have... One one of the reasons you have an interesting job is, like, it feels like you... You're probably busy every day, but there's, like, what is there, ten days a year that, like, really matter where, like, you are in the courtroom. And even in those ten days, there's probably, like, a much smaller set of minutes that actually matter. Like, talk about that kind of, like, prop... Like, like, preparation for that and and what you go through because it's For like Europe, Christian. Yeah. Yeah. It's, like, super spiky where it's, like, you know, there's there's all the prep, but then it's like an athlete where you're going in and you... You're like... It's it's like a, you know, a boxer, an MMA fighter that goes in and in that moment, there's... Everything is decided and then your track record gets decided, which then, you know... It's a lot. I think athletics

Speaker 7: is the right, you know, comparison. I always would talk about football. Right? Football is like eight minutes when you compress it down. Mhmm. You know, when I was at my my old firm and and recruits would say, you know, don't you guys work more hours than, you know, other firms? Like, those are trial hours. That's like saying Tom Brady, you know, plays more football games. He's happy to play those extra playoff and Super Bowl games. So you're all in trial is, you know, a month of trial. Like, you're not doing anything else. You're probably not seeing your family a whole lot. You're not, you know, catching up on your favorite podcasts, but you are locked in. And the whole game in litigation is to get stuff in your context window, in your head. So you can't really outsource the whole thing to AI. AI has to be used to get in your brain so that when you're standing at the podium

Speaker 1: arguing with the judge or cross examining a witness, you can call what you have to. And so you have to... Yeah. Because you can't... It's not like in in a perfect world you have an AI running in real time that is ingesting every single thing that's said in the courtroom

Speaker 7: and then giving you, you know, you're looking down and giving you... But that's not possible. That's not possible. You're you're there. It doesn't matter if you have a 100 associates or a 100 agents. It's all gonna be up here,

Speaker 2: you know, on game time. So that's what your preference for.... Be a cheating scandal like what happens in poker where someone in their shoe has something that's telling them to bet or not. Like Fudge Shannon, like, yeah, like the original wearable. Salacious one in the chess community. Won't go into that. But but, yes, like having having answers secretly fed to you, effectively, maybe not an earpiece, but something that's, you know, shocking you in your right leg if you need to press harder, shocking your left leg if you need to back off a point. Right now, the method is someone sitting at the table writes a post it note and hands it to you. Okay. So... And you have to on the fly try to figure out what the hell they're saying and how do I integrate it. There's gotta be a better way with technology. Shut up. Shut up.

Speaker 7: Okay. So there's there is some interaction. So Yeah. A little about... Little less room for a cheating scam. Yeah. But I... You know, maybe it's not cheating. Maybe there's a technological way to to enhance collaboration in the courtroom. Yeah. Well, still... Now the the the lesson from the last week for me is, like, the smartest,

Speaker 1: most successful people in the world will at times do the stupidest things imaginable. And so I wouldn't be surprised if you see a lawyer with a, you know, hidden microphone and some kind of, you know, like smartest, most high profile, most in the spotlight people sometimes do

Speaker 7: the stupidest things you can possibly imagine. So anything's possible. That is what happens. That's why I love you. Where are you setting... You're you're setting up in Greenwich? So Greenwich in New York, but we're doing a a California roadshow. I had some meetings in LA yesterday, going up to the Bay Area tomorrow for some stuff at Stanford and some other meetings and having a blast. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on.... Guys having me on. Thank Come back on. We we love

Speaker 1: we love getting, you know, the opinion of the the legal community at different points. I've been watching since the first episode, so this is an honor. Amazing. Thanks so much. Close out the show with us. Thank you very much. Love to. Leave us five stars. Flashbang. Well, there's one more thing. Cisco.