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Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
How AI Is Reshaping Healthcare, Law and Leadership with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 7-16-26
00:20:32
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- [00:01]
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A
Becker with the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Amber Walsh. Amber's on the executive committee at McGuire Woods. She's one of the leading lawyers in the nation at the intersection of healthcare and private equity. She also has this fascinating work that she does for the Physician Hospital association, our physician owned leadership. I forget exactly the name of it, but she's been on the board there for a long time with general counsel and has done wonderful work for that physician led healthcare organization. Amber, let me ask you to take a moment and ask you what you're most focused on today and then we'll talk about opportunities in healthcare, investing, healthcare leadership and a lot more. Amber?
- [01:46]
C
Yeah, so I am really going to take you up on the offer to focus on today because today I happen to be on my way back from two days of firm leadership meetings in our New York office. Board of Partners Executive Committee and top of mind for me right now is a major point of conversation that law firms are having, every industry is having and certainly health care leaders are having, which is around choices and how quickly and how committed you are to the choices you're making around the use of AI. That's really, really top of mind for me. And it's been really fascinating to see how law firms are publicly and privately making decisions or choosing not to make decisions around AI. And I see a lot of the same things Happening as well with healthcare investors and with healthcare leaders, such as. So you ask about today, that is what I'm highly focused on today.
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A
And we were talking about this today with a consulting firm, somebody run a consulting firm, and how it will change certain parts of consulting and not other parts. And I assume it's similar in law. Like at some point you'll have AI doing a lot of contract drafting, a lot of brief drafting, but then you'll still need a serious smart lawyer to really go through it and figure out what's right, what's not in the touch with it and all those things and what's, you know, what feels the right space and market. Where does that evolve to and what does that mean for sort of lawyers throughout this sort of. Where's the premium on skills? Is it going to be on being able to communicate with clients, digest and strategize? Is it going to be on still digging up lots of information, getting into the right places? Where will this change the practice of law and what are some of your thoughts about it? Like we were talking about with consulting firms?
- [03:51]
C
Yeah, the answer is yes, I think it will be all of those. It is really fascinating because the information about AI use, availability, regulatory considerations, the point you just asked, the state skill set, the changes that are coming for our industry and law, but also in the industry we serve, healthcare and private equity. It's so fast. It's happening so fast. And you have these extreme situations of all the players in all of those industries making very big bold decisions or, or choosing to make no decisions and stay stone cold silent and kind of wait it out because they don't want to get it wrong. And it feels a lot to me, a lot like the decision making that we had to do in March of 2020 around Covid. It may seem silly to draw an analogy between the pandemic and, and the AI revolution, but it has happened almost as fast because we went from in one year having major clients tell us don't use AI. It's part of our outside counsel guidelines. We don't want to see a sniff of it to now the exact same clients telling us we expect you to use it. We want you to track and report to us how you're using it, how it will save us money, et cetera. It's gone that fast. So to answer your real question, which is about where is this going? I think no one really knows the answer to that, but we are spending at the firm a tremendous amount of time thinking about and talking about this. And I happened to sit one of the other hats I wear at the firm as I sat on the AI Task Force committee, or still do. We just issued our report to the firm, but Dion Hayes, who you know, Scott, is one of our former deputy managing partners, he chairs that. And one part of our report exactly went into that question. You just posed like you were talking with the consultant of what are going to be the skill set? What do we want to double down on in hiring what may become obsolete? And for me, setting aside the doctrinal skill sets, but pivoting and looking at it from more of a what is the personality type that will be successful in this environment that's changing so quickly? I think it is someone who is willing to learn quickly, willing to learn a new skill, who is able to take in information, information that you're getting from the industry around you and how they use AI, but also from the AI tool itself, process out, triage the information and be able to act with imperfect information in front of you, but know that you have the tools available in your own brain, but also in the technology, sift out and come to the right decision. So that doesn't perfectly answer your question about exactly where it's going. But I think that personality type and that skill set is what we really want to be looking for in our recruiting efforts, but also trying to hone with our own existing team as they are learning how to use AI. It's that quick information processing, synthesizing and turning it into still an appropriate work product at the pace that we're now expected and at the cost that we're now expected to produce the work product.
- [08:11]
A
Right. So it's really fascinating because there's a lot of what would seem like behind the scenes work that will go to AI, but it's almost going to put a premium on great lawyering, great counseling, great dealing with stuff. And even if you can move documents and revising documents a lot faster, you're still going to need very smart lawyers to work through stuff and make sure it's actually what you want it to be and what you want the deal to be and everything else.
- [08:39]
C
That's absolutely right. And the pace that we're having to get the team up to speed for that, or at least we, at least we at our firm are feeling compelled to get people up to speed. Speed. It's daunting. It's exciting, but it's daunting. And we have to make decisions now in the summer of 2026 on how we're going to staff and hire first and second year associates for the year 2029. Because as you know, law firm recruiting is such this long process of recruiting a second year law student to become a summer associate who becomes your first year class. And so as quickly as the industry is changing, if we don't want to be flat footed, if we want to be responsive to client demands around cost and AI use and we want to then make sure that we have a firm that is poised for that, not only now, but a few years from now where we think we're going, we have to be able to make these decisions now. And that, you know, I go back to the word daunting and I know healthcare leaders and private equity investors are doing the same thing just with their own tweaks to that timeline and the specific things they have to deal with.
- [10:09]
A
Thank you. And take me a step further into. So we've talked about AI and where it's impacting things and it really will be one of these cascading things where over a couple of years we'll really know the answer to that. I mean at the end of the day it will, it will take some time and like many things, maybe like the iPhone, at some point we'll all know that it's really taken over all parts of our lives. But it'll be an evolution to where it does.
- [10:39]
C
So it feels like, yeah, no, that, that's exactly right. And firms are banking on that too. Of some are believe that they can wait and see. You have a few firms that are doing extreme things like publicly announcing that even mid sized law firms, no AI use whatsoever. And then you have other firms that are making extreme investments like you know, Kirkland's $500 million investment into building their own. But different reactions are happening right now. But you are right. Of course in a couple years from now it's all going to have shaken out and we're going to know and people are trying to make bets now on what's going to happen.
- [11:25]
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Right. And it's an evolution of how much you want to be a first mover and make some of the mistakes that come with it and then going ahead into that next level of trying to, you know, making sure you're really up to speed though if you didn't make early investments in it so that you, you could wait to not be a first mover but then you have to really move fast, get every on board as it starts to evolve so that you pick up the right pieces and really integrate into your workflows so you're not left behind. Too, Right?
- [11:54]
C
Exactly. And hope that that by waiting you didn't do damage to your team. You know, because sometimes waiting is the smart move. And it's just how much are you waiting and how intentionally are you waiting? Are you waiting because you're not thinking about it at all or you're thinking you're making small moves, like at least announcing policy to your team, at least doing baby steps on use cases of AI Very, very small things versus doing nothing at all. There are different ways of waiting, right?
- [12:32]
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Exactly. You can't totally wait in front of yourself because then by the time you do start to get up speed, you're going to be so far from being native in this. You can't totally wait. But you also don't have to make a $500 million bet to get a better sense of what's really going to work. And not exactly literally. Fascinating. Thank you so much. Let me touch base with you quickly on a couple other topics. And we've already hit AI pretty well. You work with a lot of founders, a lot of CEOs, a lot of investors. Give us a moment on a piece of advice. And not about AI particularly, but the world is changing so quickly. We've got CEOs of big health systems, investors from big private equity funds, founders of companies, leaders of companies. Any thoughts on how you advise people in this changing business environment? And I guess people have been saying forever that the business environment is changing, so maybe that's not all that new. But. But what advice do you give the leaders today as they navigate the world that's changing?
- [13:37]
C
Yeah, it's interesting the, the caveat you just made of it's been changing for a while. I do feel like as much as the AI landscape is moving so quickly, on the other hand, we have a lot of phenomenon that we've been living with in the healthcare investing community for well over three years. We're three to four years in intensive regulatory scrutiny where on a state by state level, we still have intense scrutiny of private equity investment in healthcare and big changes that states are trying to put through that's been going on for several years now. We still have staffing issues at all levels, from physicians and nurses to your revenue cycle team. That's been several years. We have obviously a credit environment that has loosened up a little bit. It's not quite as tough today as it was two years ago, but a lot of this has been an environment that we've been living in for a few years where investors and healthcare leaders have had a chance to regroup and refocus and produce success in different ways. So that's kind of the environment that I think we're in. And in terms of the advice for that, I think the most important thing as a leader is to show your authenticity and your vulnerability to not be paralyzed, to always communicate your vision. Even if you are in moments or dealing with something that seems to be coming at you fast and furiously, like the AI piece in particular or some other existential moment that your organization may be dealing with. For me, the worst thing you can do is not communicate with your team about your vision. To not show that you are thinking about what's going on in the world around you, to not show your awareness of what's going on in the organization and in your industry. You don't have to be perfect. And we have to deal with a lot of moments where we have imperfect information. And even if we're in a moment where some of these things we've been dealing with for a while, some are very, very brand new. But you have to communicate to your team, you have to show that you are thinking and willing to make decisions. Even if you're going to be the type of leader who doesn't move as quickly on things, you still have to communicate, you still have to show, to give confidence in your team. That's what it's all about. That communication, that showing a vulnerability, but also expressing your vision is all intended to build trust within the team. So that would be my biggest piece of advice across the landscape where we are right now.
- [17:03]
A
Thank you so much. And I love that. And there's this fine line on the vulnerability. Like there's a great concept of a leader being able to say that their wrong, that I made a mistake. And I agree with that. And the flip side being you can't be one of these leaders. That's wrong too much because then you actually lose confidence from people that they will follow you. So there's this great balance in this. I remember one time meeting with finance person who is in the wealth management business at a, you know, huge firm, one of the best in the world, etc. And them saying to us in a meeting, oh, we've been wrong for the last seven years about interest rates, but trust us. And because they had the great logo behind us, they felt like they could say that and get away with it. But in reality it did cause us to lose sort of respect for them. Or at least sort of. They were so, what's the word, so flippant about it that they're so big that they could be wrong. And I think as a leader, you have to admit when you're wrong, you have to show vulnerability. You have to be generally authentic. But if you want to lead for the long run, like Jeff Bezos said, you better be right a little bit more than you're wrong. If not, you're not going to be a very good leader.
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C
Absolutely.
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But I do find it to be a fascinating discussion because all of us have heard this concept of you have to admit when you're wrong. And I agree with that 100%. The flip side is if you're a young emerging leader and you're wrong all the time and admitting it all the time, you, you know, or you feel like you have to overly state it all the time. Like we have people that make a mistake and we will tell them you made a mistake, admit your mistake and move on. Don't dwell on it because you don't want that to become how everybody thinks about you. Oh, that person that made the mistake and you make your mistake, you apologize for it. But you don't have to go on the three year apology tour. Just, just move forward.
- [18:51]
C
Yes. And you and I both have a bias to action. It's one of the things that I learned from you. And when you have a bias to action, it also means that you better have good instincts on that or the bias to action is going to get you in trouble more than it's going to lead to success. So a bias to action with decent instincts is a good combination, but it also means that you're going to have more moments, probably less than 50%, but more moments where you have to acknowledge, hey, that wasn't exactly the right call. We learned something here and we're going to do it slightly differently. And I'm smart enough with good enough instincts that I can take that in and we're going to build into the way we're pivoting from that particular decision
- [19:48]
A
100%. And the concept is you do a much better job of a very intentional bias to action. Sometimes mine, because of caffeine or personal nature could run into overdrive. And that could cause you to make X amount of false starts in an effort or a project versus really being intentional about what am I really trying to accomplish here? What are we really trying to accomplish here as a team, as a group, as companies, whatever it might be. And I think that you do probably a better job of tempering that one bit so it comes out the right way all the time than sometimes I could find myself doing. And it's admirable.
- [20:26]
C
Well, thank you. And regardless, all of these skills have to come together and be deployed. Depending on the environment that you're dealing with and how existential and immediate a particular decision is. You have the luxury in some instances to dwell more, to take in more input, but in many instances you don't. And you know, back to the first question you posed as to what you're focused on today, I feel hyper focused today on these more immediate and acute things. So I'm thinking a lot about that right now.
- [21:10]
A
100%. Amber, as always, fantastic to visit with you. You are the very best. Again, Amber Walsh McGuire woods leadership. Just a fantastic lawyer and person and professional. The best. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast.
- [21:28]
C
Thank you.
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