{"id":145621,"date":"2026-03-09T07:43:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T15:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/03\/09\/8ams-smart-spend-enhancement-analogue-thinking-in-a-genai-world\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T07:43:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T15:43:32","slug":"8ams-smart-spend-enhancement-analogue-thinking-in-a-genai-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/03\/09\/8ams-smart-spend-enhancement-analogue-thinking-in-a-genai-world\/","title":{"rendered":"8am\u2019s Smart Spend Enhancement: Analogue Thinking In A GenAI World"},"content":{"rendered":"

At last, a new legal tech product offering that doesn\u2019t mention artificial intelligence. At all. Last month, 8am<\/a> announced its expansion of its popular \u00a08am\u2122 LawPay<\/a> into what it calls a more complete financial management platform. A platform that just works.<\/p>\n

To Do or Not To Do AI<\/strong><\/p>\n

For years, the world has been divided between the digital and analogue, between systems built on discrete binary information and those grounded in the physical world. But despite all the talk of the power of digital, sometimes analogue still drives tools. The same now seems true of GenAI: the world seems divided between things powered by GenAI and things that aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

And the things that aren\u2019t don\u2019t get much attention. But the unheralded things that aren\u2019t GenAI can still be critical to getting what lawyers want and need to get done. All the GenAI add-ons in the world aren\u2019t going to make good coffee if the coffee maker isn\u2019t a good one. The same thing is true in legal tech: there are some tools that do certain jobs better without being trumpeted as a GenAI tool. It\u2019s that underlying non-AI tool that needs to work well.<\/p>\n

8am<\/strong><\/p>\n

What\u2019s this have to do with 8am and LawPay? First of all, 8am is a company focused on the business end of law. It provides billing, accounting, time tracking, and collection-type tools that get to a key need: getting paid. Maybe not the sexiest part of legal tech but certainly one of the most important. As the press release announcing the expansion of its LawPay tool puts it: \u201c8am research<\/a> shows that fee collection, expense collection, and expense tracking are legal professionals\u2019 greatest financial and operational challenges.\u201d According to Leslie Witt, 8am Chief Product Officer, \u201cWe work closely with firms to understand how they actually operate, where time is lost, where revenue slips through cracks, and where processes break down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smart Spend<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the key and most interesting components of this unified platform is something called 8am\u2122 Smart Spend for LawPay<\/a>, about which I have written before<\/a>. Smart Spend takes the pain in the ass process of turning in receipts and reports for reimbursement into an automated system that does it for you. You use the credit card provided by 8am for your expenses and the platform automatically records and links the expense details and receipts to a client invoice.<\/p>\n

Doesn\u2019t sound all that cool, right? But I can tell you from experience what a pain it is to try to turn in these kinds of expenses on a timely basis. You rush to get to an out-of-town deposition, choke down a meal, spend the night in some forgotten motel, and when the depo ends the next day, rush to catch a plane. When you get back to the office, you face a mountain of work and deadlines. You throw the receipts in a pile on your desk and then sometime later get around to turning them in, often losing one or two receipts in the process. It\u2019s a pain for you and a pain for the firm.<\/p>\n

8am saw the problem and figured out a solution. That\u2019s what good legal tech vendors ought to do. And not being content with just eliminating a pain point, last month it announced a major enhancement to the platform. 8am says this enhancement will enable such things as centralized billing and payments. It will create and send invoices, receive payments, and track deposits from a single workspace. It will also enable time and expense tracking that captures billable hours and costs as they occur and matter-specific trust accounting that allocates and monitors client trust funds across matters for IOLTA compliance.\u00a0Finally the platform will now allow for real-time reporting and dashboards to view cash flow, deposits, and trust balances instantly.<\/p>\n

OK, So What?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The remarkable thing about the announcement and the press release were two words that did not appear: Artificial Intelligence. That\u2019s right, not one mention. Not one sentence heralding the exhaustive implementation of AI into an existing and good platform. Not one reference to AI specialists working long and hard to develop a special GenAI platform to do the work that no other company could offer.<\/p>\n

Instead, the refreshing and non-hyperbolic press release does what 8am often does: introduce a product by talking about the problem it solves, a problem that 8am perceptively saw. Like Clearbrief, which came up with a non-GenAI tool to check case citations about which we previously wrote<\/a>, the headline is not what Smart Spend does, although that\u2019s important, it\u2019s that 8am adopted a process and attacked a problem in a practical way that actually helps lawyers and legal professionals. It\u2019s the old, let\u2019s find a solution to a problem instead of finding a problem for an AI solution. A way of thinking we don\u2019t see a lot of these days.<\/p>\n

Witt puts it this way: \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of noise and excitement around the [AI] technology, and rightfully so, but our [customers] trust us to be selective and intentional about where \u2013 and how \u2013 it\u2019s applied in their workflows\u2026There\u2019s a lot of noise and excitement around the technology, and rightfully so, but they trust us to be selective and intentional about where \u2013 and how \u2013 it\u2019s applied in their workflows.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be honest: I can\u2019t vouch for how well Smart Spend works or if it does what 8am says it will (although I have found the 8am folks to be pretty credible). But it says a lot these days and times when a company markets a product without hyping that it\u2019s all about a new AI application. All too often I see vendors make some big announcement about a new AI tool that isn\u2019t all that new, really doesn\u2019t do much of anything different, and does something that doesn\u2019t need to be done.<\/p>\n

8am didn\u2019t do that. It just said what the product does. And here\u2019s why it helps you practice law. No AI hype. No AI slop. Just good old thinking about a problem before a solution.<\/p>\n

\n

Stephen Embry is a lawyer, speaker, blogger, and writer. He publishes\u00a0TechLaw Crossroads<\/a>, a blog devoted to the examination of the tension between technology, the law, and the practice of law<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

The post 8am\u2019s Smart Spend Enhancement: Analogue Thinking In A GenAI World<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

At last, a new legal tech product offering that doesn\u2019t mention artificial intelligence. At all. Last month, 8am<\/a> announced its expansion of its popular \u00a08am\u2122 LawPay<\/a> into what it calls a more complete financial management platform. A platform that just works.<\/p>\n

To Do or Not To Do AI<\/strong><\/p>\n

For years, the world has been divided between the digital and analogue, between systems built on discrete binary information and those grounded in the physical world. But despite all the talk of the power of digital, sometimes analogue still drives tools. The same now seems true of GenAI: the world seems divided between things powered by GenAI and things that aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

And the things that aren\u2019t don\u2019t get much attention. But the unheralded things that aren\u2019t GenAI can still be critical to getting what lawyers want and need to get done. All the GenAI add-ons in the world aren\u2019t going to make good coffee if the coffee maker isn\u2019t a good one. The same thing is true in legal tech: there are some tools that do certain jobs better without being trumpeted as a GenAI tool. It\u2019s that underlying non-AI tool that needs to work well.<\/p>\n

8am<\/strong><\/p>\n

What\u2019s this have to do with 8am and LawPay? First of all, 8am is a company focused on the business end of law. It provides billing, accounting, time tracking, and collection-type tools that get to a key need: getting paid. Maybe not the sexiest part of legal tech but certainly one of the most important. As the press release announcing the expansion of its LawPay tool puts it: \u201c8am research<\/a> shows that fee collection, expense collection, and expense tracking are legal professionals\u2019 greatest financial and operational challenges.\u201d According to Leslie Witt, 8am Chief Product Officer, \u201cWe work closely with firms to understand how they actually operate, where time is lost, where revenue slips through cracks, and where processes break down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smart Spend<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the key and most interesting components of this unified platform is something called 8am\u2122 Smart Spend for LawPay<\/a>, about which I have written before<\/a>. Smart Spend takes the pain in the ass process of turning in receipts and reports for reimbursement into an automated system that does it for you. You use the credit card provided by 8am for your expenses and the platform automatically records and links the expense details and receipts to a client invoice.<\/p>\n

Doesn\u2019t sound all that cool, right? But I can tell you from experience what a pain it is to try to turn in these kinds of expenses on a timely basis. You rush to get to an out-of-town deposition, choke down a meal, spend the night in some forgotten motel, and when the depo ends the next day, rush to catch a plane. When you get back to the office, you face a mountain of work and deadlines. You throw the receipts in a pile on your desk and then sometime later get around to turning them in, often losing one or two receipts in the process. It\u2019s a pain for you and a pain for the firm.<\/p>\n

8am saw the problem and figured out a solution. That\u2019s what good legal tech vendors ought to do. And not being content with just eliminating a pain point, last month it announced a major enhancement to the platform. 8am says this enhancement will enable such things as centralized billing and payments. It will create and send invoices, receive payments, and track deposits from a single workspace. It will also enable time and expense tracking that captures billable hours and costs as they occur and matter-specific trust accounting that allocates and monitors client trust funds across matters for IOLTA compliance.\u00a0Finally the platform will now allow for real-time reporting and dashboards to view cash flow, deposits, and trust balances instantly.<\/p>\n

OK, So What?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The remarkable thing about the announcement and the press release were two words that did not appear: Artificial Intelligence. That\u2019s right, not one mention. Not one sentence heralding the exhaustive implementation of AI into an existing and good platform. Not one reference to AI specialists working long and hard to develop a special GenAI platform to do the work that no other company could offer.<\/p>\n

Instead, the refreshing and non-hyperbolic press release does what 8am often does: introduce a product by talking about the problem it solves, a problem that 8am perceptively saw. Like Clearbrief, which came up with a non-GenAI tool to check case citations about which we previously wrote<\/a>, the headline is not what Smart Spend does, although that\u2019s important, it\u2019s that 8am adopted a process and attacked a problem in a practical way that actually helps lawyers and legal professionals. It\u2019s the old, let\u2019s find a solution to a problem instead of finding a problem for an AI solution. A way of thinking we don\u2019t see a lot of these days.<\/p>\n

Witt puts it this way: \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of noise and excitement around the [AI] technology, and rightfully so, but our [customers] trust us to be selective and intentional about where \u2013 and how \u2013 it\u2019s applied in their workflows\u2026There\u2019s a lot of noise and excitement around the technology, and rightfully so, but they trust us to be selective and intentional about where \u2013 and how \u2013 it\u2019s applied in their workflows.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be honest: I can\u2019t vouch for how well Smart Spend works or if it does what 8am says it will (although I have found the 8am folks to be pretty credible). But it says a lot these days and times when a company markets a product without hyping that it\u2019s all about a new AI application. All too often I see vendors make some big announcement about a new AI tool that isn\u2019t all that new, really doesn\u2019t do much of anything different, and does something that doesn\u2019t need to be done.<\/p>\n

8am didn\u2019t do that. It just said what the product does. And here\u2019s why it helps you practice law. No AI hype. No AI slop. Just good old thinking about a problem before a solution.<\/p>\n

\n

Stephen Embry is a lawyer, speaker, blogger, and writer. He publishes\u00a0TechLaw Crossroads<\/a>, a blog devoted to the examination of the tension between technology, the law, and the practice of law<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At last, a new legal tech product offering that doesn\u2019t mention artificial intelligence. At all. Last month, 8am announced its expansion of its popular \u00a08am\u2122 LawPay into what it calls a more complete financial management platform. A platform that just works. To Do or Not To Do AI For years, the world has been divided […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":145622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/dollar-sign-keyboard-money-GettyImages-183583746-CcdM5L.jpg?fit=2000%2C1500&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}