“In the middle of the night / I go walking in my sleep
From the mountains of faith…
…Through the valley of fear…
…Through the jungle of doubt…
…Through the desert of truth…”
– “The River of Dreams”, Billy Joel, 1993.
The iconic Billy Joel was probably not thinking of demos of deposition, arbitration, and trial summaries for legal professionals when he wrote his unforgettable song. Yet the emotions that he describes as the protagonist of the song goes through his own nameless struggles and searches — faith, fear, doubt, and truth — have strikingly resonance with the tech-addled, social-fueled world of today.
There are two sides to this world: the “client” side, living in the AI zeitgeist. These are attorneys, paralegals, and other legal and litigation support professionals triangulating among everything that they see and hear about this tool or that — and wondering what, if anything, makes sense for them to use. It’s definitely out there, but it’s a lot of work to cut through the noise and figure out what works for them.
And then you have the “provider” side — a million purveyors of technology/cloud/AI products of all shapes and sizes, each with their own value proposition and many of whom could potentially work for the client. But what? And how do you know?
“I know I’m searching for something / Something so undefined…”
Threadeo is very much one such provider. Unlike many, however, we think first from the client side — your side — and what would make the most sense to you. Then we work backwards to what we need to build that will actually help drive tangible value from you. Further, we recognize this tangible value must be delivered outside of the stage-managed environment of a demo, and certainly well outside of a slickly-produced video designed for engagement on your favorite social media channel. This means that product quality, service quality, value, and trust matter.
No ZIRP Demos Here
You may have heard of the term ZIRP (zero interest rate policy). This was a time roughly from the 2008 financial crisis until early 2022 when the Federal Reserve set the nominal interest rate at zero. For the non-economists among us, this enabled a lot of money to go towards funding a lot of startups that were promising all sorts of things in fancy demos without the quality or robustness to back up their promises. One infamous example of a company that recently went bankrupt was a staged product demo of a vehicle rolling downhill. Beautiful camera work. But it wouldn’t drive value for the client unless you only went downhill all the time. A classic example of a ZIRP demo — near-free money powering exaggerated promises.
We get a similar feeling with a lot of the AI-related demos that we see on social media. Every day, sometimes multiple times a day, we see something that looks amazing — a prompt in a chat window, an output that appears exceptionally good to the untrained eye. But then you wonder: would it actually work in the real world, and specifically in a use case where the “eye” is not untrained but in fact has years or decades of experience? Would that attorney’s workflow benefit from the output that the AI tool is providing? Would it do so under the vast majority of situations that the attorney or other trained legal professional has seen through the course of their careers? If not, then it leans more “ZIRP demo” than not.
Threadeo doesn’t do ZIRP demos. When we release something, it’s ready to go. It’s been tested to a level where an experienced legal professional will actually find it helps enhance and accelerate their case & trial preparation in a materially significant manner. Our entire product lineup — deposition, arbitration, trial summaries; and deposition sync — reflects this. We speak with you, we set you up, and then you go try it out. Your content, your timing, your independent evaluation.
Products, Support, Value, Trust
As you evaluate the offerings, our existing clients will tell you this: we offer exceptional support each step of your way. No question is too small or too big. We don’t do slow responses. We don’t do vague responses. And we tell you exactly what our offering does today. If we’re working towards something that may help you in the future, we’ll share that as well.
The upshot? Results continue to astound and humble us: not half a week goes by without a client or a prospect saying how helpful they found our product or how innovative they think it is, or how well it worked in their own evaluation, or how they’re using it on a daily basis. That’s all that matters to us once you’ve left the Zoom meeting, the videos views have died down, and the social media feed has moved on.
Because it is only once you experience our products and service, on your own terms, and get real answers to your questions that you can transcend the range of emotions that Billy Joel’s protagonist feels. And finally find what you’ve been looking for.