LawNext

Cornell Winston, president of the American Association of Law Libraries, brings a unique perspective to law librarianship, having spent 45 years in libraries across diverse settings — from a hospital library where he started as a student worker; to the former Whittier Law School; to prominent law firms Munger, Tolles & Olson and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; and, for the last 24 years, as law librarian in the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles. Winston joined host Bob Ambrogi to record this interview just weeks before AALL's annual meeting in Portland, Ore., July 19-22, with the theme "Be Bold." It's a fitting theme for a profession that's undergone dramatic transformation, evolving from traditional book-focused roles to becoming essential gatekeepers and evaluators of legal technology and information. In their conversation, Winston discusses the evolving challenges facing law librarians — from safeguarding disappearing government information to testing AI-driven legal research tools. They explore why he considers it critical for law librarians to have "a seat at the table" in their organizations, the opportunities for newcomers to the profession, and why Winston believes the profession's future remains bright despite predictions of its demise. Winston also shares insights on AI adoption, the importance of law librarians as strategic partners rather than just support staff, and how the profession continues to prove that while Google may find you a million answers, a librarian will find you the best one.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). SpeakWrite: Save time with fast, human-powered legal transcription—so you can focus on your practice   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Monica Zent is a true pioneer in legal innovation and entrepreneurship. She is the founder of ZentLaw, an award-winning alternative legal services provider that broke the traditional law firm mold when she founded it in 2002. ZentLaw has since grown into a nationwide legal services provider, serving global brands and major corporations with a unique subscription-based model and flexible talent approach.  But Monica's entrepreneurial journey extends well beyond ZentLaw. She's a serial entrepreneur who has founded multiple companies, including early internet startups in the 1990s. She's a patented inventor, legal tech founder, angel investor, and advisor to numerous startups. In fact, Monica describes herself as having a "career portfolio" – she's an entrepreneur who has carved her own path through the legal industry and beyond. Her latest venture is the Law Innovation Agency, a collective that brings together a think tank component, consulting services, and investment connections to help organizations navigate the rapidly changing landscape of legal technology and AI.  Throughout her career, Zent has been a strong advocate for innovation, efficiency, and diversity in the legal profession. Her articles on legal innovation, women in technology, entrepreneurship, and leadership have appeared in publications like Inc. Magazine, Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Huffington Post, and she has won numerous awards, including Corporate Counsel's Women, Influence & Power in the Law Award in the Innovative Leadership category On today's show, Monica joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss her entrepreneurial journey and her vision for the future of legal services and legal innovation.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). SpeakWrite: Save time with fast, human-powered legal transcription—so you can focus on your practice   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

On May 5, 2025, PERSUIT, a technology company that specializes in helping corporate legal departments select and manage outside counsel, announced that it had acquired Apperio, a spend-management platform for corporate legal, in a move designed to create an end-to-end workflow solution spanning everything from matter intake to invoice payment.   “This acquisition accelerates our ability to connect every point in the outside counsel workflow with intelligence,” Jim Delkousis, cofounder and CEO of PERSUIT, said at the time. “We're not just managing spend — we're turning it into performance.”   This week on LawNext, Delkousis joins host Bob Ambrogi to share his vision for PERSUIT and why he believes the Apperio acquisition brings “superpowers” that will help propel the company further forward in realizing that vision. The episode was recorded on the day PERSUIT announced the acquisition.  Before founding PERSUIT nearly nine years ago, Delkousis had an accomplished career as a litigation attorney, serving as a partner at King & Wood Mallesons in Australia and later helping establish DLA Piper's Middle East practice in Dubai. In the conversation, he will discuss how his experience on the law firm side informed his mission to shift the legal industry from time-based to value-based fee arrangements. He will also talk about the strategic vision behind the Apperio acquisition and how generative AI is accelerating the evolution of legal service delivery.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). SpeakWrite: Save time with fast, human-powered legal transcription—so you can focus on your practice   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

"Everybody understands the world is volatile, but they don't necessarily understand why it's volatile or how to deal with it," says Sean West, cofounder of Hence Technologies and author of the new book, Unruly: Fighting Back When Politics, AI, and Law Upend the Rules of Business. "Unruly is a play on words. ... The world is kind of ‘unruling.' The rules and norms that were developed during globalization are falling away." On this week's LawNext, West joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss how the collision of geopolitics, technology, and legal shifts is creating unprecedented challenges for businesses of all sizes – and their legal advisors. Their conversation explores how businesses can turn volatility into opportunity, the importance of strategic legal counsel in this environment, and why companies of all sizes need access to geopolitical intelligence. They also discuss Hence's recent launch of Hence Global, an AI-powered platform designed to help businesses and their legal counsel manage geopolitical uncertainties by providing customized, real-time risk analysis and insights tailored to specific business roles and needs. West explains how the platform delivers personalized, role-specific intelligence that enables legal teams to better serve their clients and organizations in an increasingly uncertain world. Before cofounding Hence in 2020, West was global deputy CEO of Eurasia Group, a global affairs advisory firm, where he advised CEOs, general counsel and investors on geopolitical and legal risk. He is also a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). SpeakWrite: Save time with fast, human-powered legal transcription—so you can focus on your practice   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

LawDroid Founder Tom Martin on Building, Teaching and Advising About AI for Legal If you follow legal tech at all, you would be justified in suspecting that Tom Martin has figured out how to use artificial intelligence to clone himself.  While running LawDroid, his legal tech company, the Vancouver-based Martin also still manages a law practice in California, oversees an annual legal tech awards program, teaches a law school course on generative AI, runs an annual AI conference, hosts a podcast, and recently launched a legal tech consultancy. In January 2023, less than two months after ChatGPT first launched, Martin's company was one of the first to launch a gen AI assistant specifically for lawyers, called LawDroid Copilot. He has since also launched LawDroid Builder, a no-code platform for creating custom AI agents.  Beyond his work at LawDroid, Martin is an adjunct professor at Suffolk Law School, teaching "Generative AI and the Delivery of Legal Services," and is a co-founder of the American Legal Technology Awards, which will be holding its sixth annual ceremony this October in Boston. In today's conversation, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi speaks with Martin about his journey from practicing lawyer to legal tech founder, his perspective on how gen AI is transforming the legal profession, and his insights on implementing AI in law firms and legal aid organizations.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). SpeakWrite: Save time with fast, human-powered legal transcription—so you can focus on your practice If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

In the gold rush of generative AI, it seems that every legal tech vendor wants to be a one-stop shop for legal technology. But after 15 years of developing legal tech, Nik Reed, CEO of Knowable, a legal technology company devoted to helping enterprises bring order and organization to their executed agreements, believes that lawyers should be wary of the hype. Often, the most successful AI solutions are those that focus on solving specific problems exceptionally well rather than attempting to be all things to all lawyers.  On today's LawNext, Reed joins host Bob Ambrogi for a conversation that explores what makes legal AI actually work well in practice. It is a topic he has been thinking about, in one form or another, since he was still a student at Stanford Law School, where he co-founded the legal research startup Ravel with classmate Daniel Lewis in 2012. After LexisNexis acquired Ravel in 2017, Reed moved into strategic product management there, and then joined Knowable in 2019 to lead its product research and development. He became the company's CEO last November, just as the company launched Ask Knowable, its generative AI suite.  In a conversation that explores what makes legal AI actually work in practice, Reed emphasizes the critical importance of pristine data environments, high-quality metadata, and clearly defined use cases. “It's still hard to build really good products, especially for lawyers, and it takes a lot of hard work,” Reed says. “ And anyone that's telling you that that's not the truth is probably already a product that you shouldn't be using.” But ultimately, he believes, AI has the potential to restore balance to legal practice by handling the rote work lawyers never wanted to do, allowing them to return to what they went to law school for – critical reasoning and solving complex problems. Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.   Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. LEX Reception, Never miss a call, with expert answering service for Lawyers. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). SpeakWrite: Save time with fast, human-powered legal transcription—so you can focus on your practice   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

In January, a merciless firestorm swept through the Pacific Palisades and surrounding areas of Los Angeles, becoming the most destructive wildfire in the city's history. Driven by hurricane-force Santa Ana winds and fueled by record-dry conditions, the Palisades Fire destroyed over 6,800 structures, burned nearly 24,000 acres, and dramatically altered the lives of thousands of residents. Among them were three individuals with deep ties to the legal tech community, each of whom lost their home to the fire. This week on LawNext, we speak with those three individuals:  Valerie Chan, founder of the legal PR firm Platform PR.  Rick Merrill, former founder of Gavalytics and current COO of Bridgeline Solutions. Adam Camras, co-founder of Lawgical, longtime CEO of the Legal Talk Network, and chief collaboration officer at InfoTrack. These three legal tech leaders share their harrowing experiences as the flames approached, the devastating aftermath of losing their homes, and their ongoing journey of recovery and rebuilding. Their stories offer a rare and intimate glimpse into how even those with resources and professional expertise face overwhelming challenges when confronted with natural disaster. From the initial evacuation decisions to battles with insurance companies and uncertain rebuilding timelines, this conversation reveals both the practical realities and profound emotional impact of sudden, catastrophic loss. We also want to mention a related project, California Fires Legal Resources, in which the legal tech community, spearheaded by Clio, worked together to launch a website devoted to providing legal resources related to the LA fires, both for victims of the fires and legal professionals working on behalf of those victims.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. LEX Reception, Never miss a call, with expert answering service for Lawyers. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). SpeakWrite: Save time with fast, human-powered legal transcription—so you can focus on your practice   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

As reported yesterday in an exclusive at LawSites blog, two leading international legal transformation organizations, the Digital Legal Exchange (DLEx) and the Liquid Legal Institute (LLI), have joined forces in a strategic union that brings together more than 1,500 members representing more than 140 multinational corporations, organizations, institutions and agencies across more than 20 countries.  On today's LawNext, two of the principles of that union — Mark Cohen, chairman emeritus of DLEx, and Dr. Dierk Schindler, cofounder of LLI — join host Bob Ambrogi to discuss their vision of creating the world's leading think tank for legal transformation. Among the topics they discuss:  The origins and evolution of both organizations. How their complementary approaches — LLI's grassroots community spanning all levels of organizations and DLEx's executive-level focus — will create greater impact together. What "legal transformation" means in today's rapidly evolving environment. How businesses are driving change in the legal function. The importance of mindset in transformation. Plans for future collaboration, including joint projects and events. Listen to gain unique insights into how these organizations aim to shape the future of legal through collective effort and a truly global perspective.   About the Guests Mark Cohen is the chairman emeritus of DLEx and founder of Legal Mosaic. With nearly 50 years in the legal industry, Mark has been a prosecutor, partner at a major law firm, founder of his own firm, and head of an international aviation parts business. He writes for Forbes and teaches at law and business schools around the world. Dr. Dierk Schindler is a co-founder of the Liquid Legal Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in European law and has extensive experience in private practice and in-house legal departments. Schindler has been a driving force in legal innovation and process-driven legal operations.   Related Resources Liquid Legal Institute website Digital Legal Exchange website Liquid Legal: Sustaining the Rule of Law – Artificial Intelligence, E-Justice and the Cloud (book publication) Upcoming events: Legal Tech Talk 2025 (London, June 26-27, 2025) and LLI's 2025 Summit (Düsseldorf, July 7-8, 2025)   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. LEX Reception, Never miss a call, with expert answering service for Lawyers. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). SpeakWrite: Save time with fast, human-powered legal transcription—so you can focus on your practice If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

“The landscape we all stand on is shifting, and massive amounts of change are upon us,” Phil Saunders, the chief executive officer of e-discovery and legal technology giant Relativity, recently wrote in a post on the company's blog. Driving that change are three transformative forces, he wrote: new legal data challenges, advancing generative AI, and legal's journey to the cloud.  On this episode of LawNext, Saunders – who joined Relativity as CEO in 2022 after three decades in the technology sector – joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss why he believes that both Relativity and the legal industry at large are at a pivotal moment, and to outline his company's vision for navigating these three forces reshaping the legal technology landscape.  Within Saunders' blog post was a notable announcement: Starting in 2028, Relativity will require that all new matters be hosted on its cloud platform, RelativityOne – a significant milestone for a company that built its success on its on-premises Relativity Server product.  The conversation starts there, with what might be considered the last mile in the company's transition to the cloud. Saunders also discusses what attracted him to join Relativity, how the company is approaching the opportunities and challenges presented by generative AI, its work with the Legal Data Intelligence initiative, and his longer-term strategic vision for Relativity.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.   Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. LEX Reception, Never miss a call, with expert answering service for Lawyers. Legalweek, March 24-27, New York Hilton Midtown. Register today at legalweekshow.com. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Recently, legal technology company SurePoint Technologies acquired the legal practice management company ZenCase in a strategic move aimed at enhancing SurePoint's practice management offerings for mid-sized law firms. In this episode of LawNext, Eric Thurston, who recently marked his two-year anniversary as CEO of SurePoint Technologies, joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss the acquisition and share his perspective on the mid-market landscape in law.  Originally founded in 1982 as Rippe & Kingston, SurePoint has established itself as a leading provider of financial and practice management software for mid-sized law firms, currently serving nearly 1,000 customers. As Thurston explains in the interview, the acquisition of ZenCase strengthens its front-end capabilities with features tailored specifically for lawyers. The acquisition helps SurePoint "leapfrog innovation by about three years," he says, while addressing customer demands for more lawyer-friendly interfaces. The conversation also explores SurePoint's earlier acquisition of Leopard Solutions, a business intelligence platform that provides comprehensive data on attorneys and law firms across the country, enabling everything from strategic recruiting to competitor analysis. Thurston explains how they've already integrated Leopard's analytics into ZenCase, allowing lawyers to quickly access valuable industry data. Looking at the mid-market practice management landscape, Thurston acknowledges that it is currently fragmented, but he believes SurePoint is positioned to become "the Clio of the mid-market." He outlines the company's vision to help firms not just manage their practices but accelerate growth through better technology, data analytics, and business intelligence. With a philosophy that "you're either growing or dying," Thurston shares how he believes SurePoint continues to evolve while helping law firms do the same.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. LEX Reception, Never miss a call, with expert answering service for Lawyers. Legalweek, March 24-27, New York Hilton Midtown. Register today at legalweekshow.com. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

On this week's show: LawNext takes you to the movies. Well, to a specific movie, anyway – a documentary being made to raise public awareness and understanding of the access to justice crisis in this country.  Today's guests are the film's director, documentary filmmaker Laura Hand, who previously directed The Tent Mender, about homelessness on Skid Row in Los Angeles, and Maya Markovich, a legal innovation leader – and two-time previous guest on this show (here and here) – who is serving as a producer and advisor to the documentary. You may know Markovich as executive director of the Justice Technology Association and for her recent appointment as vice president of the American Arbitration Association's thought leadership and research arm.  The documentary, called Justice: Just A Promise?, has been given unprecedented access to film inside the courthouses of the Los Angeles County court system – the largest court system in the world and one where litigants unable to get a lawyer present enormous challenges to the civil justice system.  As this episode airs, the filmmakers have just launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to raise the money they need to complete and distribute the film. During today's conversation, you'll hear about that campaign, including Hand's surprising explanation of why she went that route to raise funds.  You will also learn all about the making of the film and how the filmmakers aim to raise awareness about a nationwide crisis that far too few are even aware of, let alone understand.  Check out their fundraising page here.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. LEX Reception, Never miss a call, with expert answering service for Lawyers. Legalweek, March 24-27, New York Hilton Midtown. Register today at legalweekshow.com.    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

After building his career as an engineer at Facebook and as a venture capitalist at Lightspeed Venture Partners, Jay Madheswaran and his cofounders spotted an opportunity to deploy cutting-edge AI to transform what they saw as an underserved segment of the legal market, launching Eve, an AI platform purpose-built for plaintiffs' law firms. Eve has quickly gained traction, recently securing a $47 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, and boasting 800% year-over-year growth.  But what makes Eve's story particularly interesting is its mission to transform traditional plaintiffs' firms into what Madheswaran calls "AI-native law firms" – where technology does not just automate tasks but fundamentally changes how legal services are delivered, in part by encoding firms' unique knowledge and processes into intelligent systems. In today's episode, Madheswaran joins host Bob Ambrogi to explain his concept of AI-native law firms and describe how Eve's technology can help firms double or triple their caseloads by automating everything from case-intake analysis to document drafting, all while learning to work in each firm's unique voice and style.  He also discusses the challenges of building trust with lawyers around AI and his vision for increasingly specialized legal services in an AI-powered future.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.   Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). LEX Reception, Never miss a call, with expert answering service for Lawyers. Legalweek, March 24-27, New York Hilton Midtown. Register today at legalweekshow.com.    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Earlier this month, a legal tech startup called Fortuna Arbitration launched what it says is the first true AI judge – an automated arbitration system called Arbitrus.ai that the company claims can fully replace human arbitrators in resolving legal disputes. The system promises to cut the cost of arbitration from an average of $100,000 to just $10,000, while delivering consistent, unbiased decisions within 72 hours. On this week's LawNext, our guests are two of the founders behind this ambitious project. Brian Potts is a partner at Husch Blackwell and an experienced commercial litigator. He is also the inventor of the LegalBoard, a computer keyboard designed for lawyers that was wildly popular when it launched. And Kimo Gandall is the CEO of Fortuna Arbitration and a current third-year Harvard Law student who, along with third co-founder Kenny McLaren, has been working on AI legal prediction systems since well before he went to law school.  They've published their testing of Arbitrus, showing zero hallucinations across 100 test cases. They believe their system will not only make arbitration faster and cheaper, but could eventually evolve into what they call an 'Arbitration State' – a private legal system that could handle a significant portion of disputes that currently clog our courts. Is this AI judge the future of dispute resolution? Or are there fundamental aspects of legal decision-making that require human judgment? In today's episode, we'll explore these questions and more. Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). LEX Reception, Never miss a call, with expert answering service for Lawyers. Legalweek, March 24-27, New York Hilton Midtown. Register today at legalweekshow.com.    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

When former Wall Street lawyer Jonathan Petts joined forces in 2016 with Rohan Pavuluri, then a research assistant in Harvard Law School's Access to Justice Lab, and Mark Hansen, a software engineer, to create Upsolve, they had a simple but powerful vision: make bankruptcy filing as accessible as online tax preparation for Americans crushed by debt.  Today, their nonprofit has helped over 16,000 low-income families discharge more than $700 million in debt through Chapter 7 bankruptcy – all at no cost to users. In this episode of LawNext, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by Petts, now Upsolve's CEO, and Ben Jackson, an ex-Uber driver who joined Upsolve's founding team after his first year of law school and who is now chief product officer. They share their personal journeys that led them to create Upsolve, from Petts' experience as a big firm lawyer helping pro bono clients get fresh starts to Jackson's own struggles with $60,000 in credit card debt.  They detail how Upsolve works, who it serves, and how they maintain quality while providing free services.They also discuss how they're leveraging AI to expand their impact, their battle against unauthorized practice of law restrictions in a groundbreaking federal lawsuit in New York, and their mission to help Americans rebuild their financial futures. Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). LEX Reception, Never miss a call, with expert answering service for Lawyers.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

When it comes to contract negotiations, lawyers often find themselves spending countless hours haggling over standard agreements such as NDAs and SaaS contracts, with both sides often saying more or less the same thing, but in different words. What if there was a better way?  Today's guests believe there is. Electra Japonas, chief legal officer at Law Insider and founder of the successful oneNDA initiative, and Preston Clark, Law Insider president, are on a mission to revolutionize contract negotiations by developing and open-sourcing a suite of standard agreements. They started with oneNDA, which has been adopted by over 6,000 organizations and used in an estimated 10 million agreements annually, and they have just launched their oneSaaS standard. Now, they are setting their sights on developing a full library of standard, open-source agreements. Japonas shares how her experience as a lawyer at the European Space Agency initially shaped her vision for contract standardization, and she explains the methodology behind the development of oneSaaS, which involved analysis of nearly 1,000 existing agreements and incorporated feedback from hundreds of legal professionals and SaaS providers.  Clark joins midway through the show to discuss Law Insider's plans to build a comprehensive ecosystem of standardized agreements, supported by AI-powered contract automation technology. He outlines how the company plans to transform routine contract work while maintaining its commitment to keeping these standards freely available to the legal community.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). LEX Reception, Never miss a call, with expert answering service for Lawyers.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

In the United States, we face a staggering crisis in access to justice, with over 90% of low-income Americans' civil legal needs estimated to be going unmet. But what if there was a way to dramatically expand legal help by empowering a new category of legal helpers?  That's exactly what today's guest, Nikole Nelson, is working to achieve as CEO of Frontline Justice. After 25 years as a legal aid lawyer in Alaska, Nelson now leads this national nonprofit organization dedicated to establishing and supporting "community justice workers" – people who are not lawyers but who are trained to provide essential legal assistance to those who cannot afford attorneys.  Nelson was a guest on this show a year ago, shortly after Frontline Justice was founded and she was named CEO. She returns today to catch us up on what has happened since then across the country towards her ultimate goal of bringing justice workers to every U.S. state.  She reports that five states now have laws in place that authorize justice workers and another 20 states are now in the process of adopting or considering these programs. To facilitate these developments, her organization has launched a National Taskforce on Community Justice Worker Training. Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). LEX Reception, Never miss a call, with expert answering service for Lawyers.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Earlier this month, the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States, held its annual Innovations in Technology Conference in Phoenix. This year's conference was particularly special for two reasons. For one, it was the conference's 25th anniversary, as well as the 25th anniversary of the Technology Initiative Grants program that was the genesis of the conference.  For another, this year's conference followed the official retirement in November of Glenn Rawdon, the person who got the conference started in the first place and who oversaw it all these years. As program counsel at the LSC since 1999, it was Rawdon's job to assist legal services programs with their technology efforts, manage the LSC's technology grants, and make this conference happen every year.  Rawdon is our guest this week, as he sits down with host Bob Ambrogi to share the origin story and evolution of the two groundbreaking LSC initiatives he helped launch and oversee — the TIG program and the ITC conference (long known as the TIG conference).  From the conference's humble beginnings as a gathering of 32 people in New Orleans in 2000, Rawdon explains how it grew into what many now consider the premier global event focused on technology and access to justice, this year drawing 700 attendees and 150 presenters from around the world. He also discusses how the TIG program, which started with a $7.5 million budget funding mainly website projects, evolved to support more sophisticated technology initiatives aimed at expanding access to legal services. Drawing from his unique background as a solo practitioner who embraced technology in the 1980s to improve his own efficiency, Rawdon shares insights about the initially tentative but gradually expanding role of technology in legal aid organizations. He discusses key milestones like the development of document assembly tools, online intake systems, and statewide legal information websites — innovations that helped transform how legal aid is delivered.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). LEX Reception, Never miss a call, with expert answering service for Lawyers.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

From legal aid attorney to legal tech innovator, Sateesh Nori brings a unique perspective to the intersection of artificial intelligence and access to justice.  After spending two decades in the trenches as a housing lawyer at legal aid offices in New York City, Nori now bridges multiple worlds – continuing his legal aid work at the Legal Aid Society of NYC while also serving as an adjunct clinical professor at NYU Law School in its eviction defense clinic and working as a senior legal innovation strategist at Just-Tech LLC, a technology consulting firm that focuses on legal services providers.   He recently partnered with Housing Court Answers, a nonprofit tenants' rights organization in NYC, and Josef, the legal automation company, to develop and launch Roxanne, an AI-powered tool to help tenants understand their repair rights, and he believes artificial intelligence could be the key to finally making meaningful progress in closing the justice gap.  As if all that were not enough to keep Nori busy, he recently published a memoir, Sheltered: Twenty Years in Housing Court, and gave a TEDx talk, How A Chatbot Can Save Someone From Homelessness.  Today, in a conversation recorded live at the Legal Services Corporation's Innovations in Technology conference in Phoenix last week, Nori and host Bob Ambrogi discuss why he believes that AI is as transformative as electricity, how he is using it in his own work, and why he believes law schools are failing to prepare students for the AI revolution. Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Anastasia Boyko likes to say that she's Goldilocks-ed her way through her career. True, it's been a varied career, as she's tried out different roles, but it is a career that has taken her full circle, from Yale Law School, where she graduated, and then eventually back to Yale Law to create a program in leadership for lawyers, and from Salt Lake City, where she grew up after she and her mother fled Soviet-era Ukraine, and then back to that city as chief innovation officer at the University of Utah's S.J. Quinney College of Law.  Along the way, Boyko has learned a thing or two about the roles of leadership and innovation in legal education, and she has strong opinions about why law schools should do better at preparing students to be both leaders and innovators. In today's LawNext, Boyko joins host Bob Ambrogi to share the journey of her Goldilocks-ed career and her insights on leadership and innovation, as well as ac-cess to justice.  After graduating from Yale Law School, Boyko began her career in private practice as a tax lawyer. She went on to hold diverse professional positions, including law librarian, Supreme Court intern, banker, yoga teacher, wellness entrepreneur, and career coach. She returned to Yale Law as the inaugural dean of the school's Tsai Leadership Program, where she developed an innovative leadership program for lawyers, and returned to the University of Utah's law school, first as director of non-J.D. programs and then as chief innovation officer.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Littler, local everywhere.  Steno, reliable court reporting with a revolutionary approach Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

On Dec. 5, in a move to enhance access to justice, the Supreme Court of the state of Washington issued a historic order authorizing a regulatory reform pilot program by which entities not owned by lawyers will be able to deliver legal services. The move makes Washington only the third state, after Utah and Arizona, to approve a comprehensive change to the longstanding rule that only entities owned by lawyers can practice law.  The pilot, which will last for 10 years, is designed to test whether entity regulation will increase access to justice by enhancing access to affordable and reliable legal and law-related services. Entities approved to operate under the pilot will be allowed to practice law, but only under strict conditions that limit the duration of their operations and that require active monitoring and oversight.  To discuss the development and details of this pilot, we are joined today by two guests representing the two organizations that proposed this pilot to the court and that will now be tasked with partnering to get it up and running. They are: Terra Nevitt, executive director of the Washington State Bar Association, and Craig Shank, a Washington lawyer and member of the Washington Supreme Court's Practice of Law Board.  Their share their perspectives on how this pilot could enhance access to justice and what the development means for regulatory reform more broadly.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Littler, local everywhere.  Steno, reliable court reporting with a revolutionary approach Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

On today's LawNext: we hand over the podcast to NotebookLM to discuss the state of law practice management technology.  If you haven't heard of NotebookLM, it is a generative AI tool from Google that turns your documents into engaging audio discussions. Its output sounds a whole lot like, well, a podcast, with two hosts chatting it up about your documents.  To quote Google's own description, “With one click, two AI hosts start up a lively “deep dive” discussion based on your sources. They summarize your material, make connections between topics, and banter back and forth.” So we decided to give it a try. Back in September, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi wrote a four-part series on his LawSites blog called, “The Shrinking Ownership of Law Practice Management Technology.” It was a deep dive into how ownership of law practice management software for solo and small law firms has been consolidated under just six major ownership groups.  We loaded the four parts of that series into NotebookLM and asked it to generate its audio overview. What you'll hear today is the discussion it generated, followed by Bob's thoughts on what it produced. The NotebookLM audio is about 15 minutes long, and Bob's comments will come after that plays.  It is important to keep in mind that the audio generated by NotebookLM is not simply a summary. The two speakers do summarize key points from Bob's articles, but they also add interpretations and perspectives that are nowhere to be found in the original source material.  Here are the articles on which the audio is based: The shrinking ownership of law practice management technology (Part 1 of 4): A Market Dominated by Just Six Ownership Groups.  The shrinking ownership of law practice management technology (Part 2 of 4): A Scorecard of Who Owns What. The shrinking ownership of law practice management technology (Part 3 of 4): Future Development and Market Opportunities. The shrinking ownership of law practice management technology (Part 4 of 4): Wrapping It All Up.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Littler, local everywhere.  Steno, reliable court reporting with a revolutionary approach ShareFile, Securely send, store, and share files – plus discover document workflows designed to improve your client experience.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

You cannot have innovation without adoption. That was a theme I heard repeatedly when I attended the Knowledge Management & Innovation for Legal conference in New York City in October. Our guest today, Paul Henry, would take that a step further and say you do not really have adoption without engagement.  Henry is the founder and CEO of NGAGE Intelligence, a platform that provides law firms with highly granular and comprehensive behavioral analytics to help them understand whether, how and by whom their communication, collaboration and AI tools are being used.   NGAGE was founded on the notion of employee engagement and how analytics can be used to measure and improve it. At the conference, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi sat down with Henry to learn more about Ngage and how the analytics it provides can drive adoption, engagement and governance.  A note that this was recorded live at the conference, as the morning keynote speech was being piped throughout the conference area, so I apologize for the background noise.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Littler, local everywhere.  Steno, reliable court reporting with a revolutionary approach Sharefile, Securely send, store, and share files – plus discover document workflows designed to improve your client experience.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Everlaw for Good is a program run by the e-discovery company Everlaw, through which it makes its software available at no cost to legal aid organizations, nonprofit organizations, and investigative journalists.  One beneficiary of that program is the Center for Justice and Accountability, a human rights nonprofit that works to seek justice on behalf of victims of atrocity crimes, including torture, genocide, and war crimes. At the recent Everlaw Summit, the CJA's work using the Everlaw platform was honored with the Everlaw for Good award.  LawNext host Bob Ambrogi was at the summit, which was held in San Francisco in October, and he had the opportunity to sit down to record this conversation with two of the CJA's lawyers, along with the director of the Everlaw for Good program. Today's guests are: Claret Vargas, senior staff attorney at CJA.  Daniel McLaughlin, senior staff attorney at CJA. Joanne Sprague, director of Everlaw for Good.  They discuss the Everlaw for Good program and the specific impact it has had on CJA's work.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Littler, local everywhere.  Steno, reliable court reporting with a revolutionary approach Sharefile, Securely send, store, and share files – plus discover document workflows designed to improve your client experience.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

In the field of legal knowledge management and innovation, Sally Gonzalez is both a legend and a trailblazer. Over the course of her 40-year career, she has worked for some of the world's largest law firms to develop and lead KM and strategic technology initiatives. She has overseen KM and information technology programs at such global firms as Norton Rose Fulbright, Dentons, Akin Gump, Covington & Burling, and Jones Day, and been a strategic consultant at major consulting firms including HBR, Navigant, PwC and, most recently, Fireman & Company,  Gonzalez surprised some of those who attended the Knowledge Management and Innovation for Legal Conference held in New York City in October, where she was the keynote speaker, when she announced her retirement there and was recognized by her peers for her decades of contributions to the legal industry. That made her keynote, in which she spoke about core principles for successful KM, her swan song, of sorts.  Following her keynote, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi, who was at the conference, sat down with Gonzalez to record this conversation about her thoughts on KM, innovation, AI, culture, change management, and much more.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). Littler, local everywhere.  Steno, reliable court reporting with a revolutionary approach   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Recently, the Everlaw Summit, the annual customer conference of the e-discovery company Everlaw, convened in San Francisco. In his keynote address there, cofounder and CEO AJ Shankar announced the general availability, after a year of beta testing, of a suite of generative AI features for reviewing, coding and analyzing documents in discovery and litigation prep.  LawNext host Bob AmbrogiI was at the conference, and the next morning, he sat down with Shankar for this conversation about Everlaw's development of these AI tools and Shankar's views on how gen AI will impact legal professionals. As you'll hear him say, he makes no bones about calling it a game changer.  With a doctorate in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, Shankar founded Everlaw in 2011 as one of the earliest cloud-based e-discovery platforms. He has been on this podcast twice before: In April 2019, where he discussed the company's founding and early development. In November 2021, just after Everlaw became one of the first legal tech companies to achieve unicorn status, or a valuation of over $1 billion.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). Littler, local everywhere.  Steno, reliable court reporting with a revolutionary approach   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

At the Knowledge Management and Innovation for Legal Conference held recently in New York City, Legal Services NYC was named as the inaugural winner of the LexPrize award, which is designed to recognize groundbreaking ideas in knowledge management and innovation for the legal industry. It won for its development of the Legal Services NYC KM Portal, a custom-built knowledge management portal designed to enable its legal professionals to more easily access important resources and more effectively collaborate with each other.  LSNYC, whose 12 offices and more than 500 attorneys serve nearly 110,000 clients annually, developed the portal in partnership with Sente Advisors, a company that helps law firms and legal organizations develop innovative projects. Designed to be a home for user-submitted and curated knowledge that is easily searchable, LSNYC describes the portal as one part social network, one part intranet, and one part enterprise search.  LawNext host Bob Ambrogi was at the KM&I for Legal conference and had the opportunity to sit down there with two of the people who were instrumental in the portal's design and development:  Alexander Horwitz, chief operating officer at Legal Services NYC.  Kate Boyd, chief operating officer at Sente Advisors.  In today's episode, Horwitz and Boyd share the story of the problem they set out to solve, the constraints they had to work within, and how they went about doing it.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). Littler, local everywhere.    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Recently, the law practice management company Clio launched Clio Duo, its generative AI legal assistant. On today's LawNext, Jonathan Watson, Clio's chief technology officer, joins the show to discuss Duo's development, capabilities and future direction.He also talks about some of the other products Clio recently launched, including native accounting and custom reporting.  Watson and LawNext host Bob Ambrogi recorded this conversation live at the Clio Cloud Conference in Austin, Texas, in October. Watson has twice previously been on this podcast, on Nov. 14, 2023, and on Nov. 3, 2022. He has been with Clio since 2017, and has been its CTO since 2021. He was previously director of engineering at Shopify.  Note that this is the fifth and final episode we are posting that we recorded live at the Clio Cloud Conference. Check out the other four episodes:  Live from #ClioCon: Clio CEO Jack Newton on Generative AI and the New Duo AI Legal Assistant. Live from #ClioCon: A Clio Power Trio, with COO Ronnie Gurion, CFO Curt Sigfstead, and Board Member Mark Britton. Recorded Live At #ClioCon: A Deep Dive into the 2024 Clio Legal Trends Report, with Joshua Lenon, Clio's Lawyer in Residence.  LawNext Podcast: The LegalTech Fund's Zach Posner on Investing in Legal Tech (and His Upcoming Summit).    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

When Zach Posner was last on this podcast, it was 2021 and he was less than a year into having cofounded The LegalTech Fund, the first venture capital firm to be laser-focused on law and legal technology. Since then, his firm, of which he is managing director, has gone on to build up a portfolio of more than 60 legal tech companies in which it invests.  His firm has also launched his own conference, the TLTF Summit, which will convene for the third straight year starting Dec. 4 in Key Biscayne, Fla. After attending the first summit, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi wrote in his review, “It was a superlative conference – one like no other conference in legal tech.” We've been wanting to get Zach back on this podcast for an update, and as it happens, he was in attendance at the recent Clio Cloud Conference, where we were set up with my mics and recording equipment. So Zach and Bob sat down for this impromptu conversation about his firm, his conference, and his thoughts on the legal tech landscape.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

At the recent Clio Cloud Conference in Austin, Texas, Clio released its ninth annual Legal Trends Report, a report that uses both survey responses and anonymized data from Clio users to paint a picture of key trends in law practice and legal technology. This year's report has some intriguing findings on lawyers' adoption of AI and the types of tasks within a law office that could be automated using AI.The survey also looks at trends in hourly and flat fee billing, and includes the results of a “secret shopper” study of lawyers' responses (or, more accurately, non-responses) to inquiries from potential clients. To discuss all of this and more, Joshua Lenon, Clio's lawyer in residence and one of the principal authors of the report, sat down live with LawNext host Bob Ambrogi during the conference. Here is their conversation.  Note that we have already posted two other LawNExt episodes recorded live at ClioCon, one with Clio's founder and CEO Jack Newton, and another with what we called the “Clio Power Trio” of Clio's COO Ronnie Gurion, CFO Curt Sigfstead, and board member and investor Mark Britton.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

This has been a significant year for the law practice management company Clio, which in July raised a record-setting $900 million financing round – the largest ever for a legal tech company, and which recently wrapped up its 12th annual Clio Cloud Conference, its largest ever with some 2,600 attendees in person in Austin, Texas, and almost as many attending virtually from all over the globe.  At the conference, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi sat down for a live interview with a “Clio power trio” of two of its top executives and a member of its board of directors. They talk about the implications of this raise and its impact on the law practice management landscape. Together for this interview are: Ronnie Gurion, chief operating officer and former GM and global head of Uber for Business. Curt Sigfstead, chief financial officer, responsible for Clio's financial affairs, including finance, accounting, capital, treasury, taxation, and corporate development. Mark Britton, an investor in Clio and member of its board of directors and investor and formerly the founder, chairman and CEO of Avvo.   They share their perspectives on the financing and the opportunities it presents. They also discuss why investors are showing greater interest in legal tech, consolidation within the legal tech industry, and the possibility of Clio going public.  Note that last week's episode, also recorded live at the conference, featured Jack Newton, Clio's founder and CEO.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

We've just returned from the Clio Cloud Conference, held this year in Austin, Texas, where, in what has become an annual tradition, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi sat down with Clio founder and CEO Jack Newton for a live interview.  At the conference, Clio launched Clio Duo, the generative AI legal assistant integrated into Clio's flagship product, Clio Manage. In this interview, Newton discusses what Duo does and why he believes generative AI is a game-changer for lawyers, more significant even than lawyers' move to the cloud a decade ago, but with parallels to that transition.  Newton also talks about findings from Clio's just-released Legal Trends Report on lawyers' adoption of AI and the concerns about AI that are still holding some lawyers back. In a broad-ranging conversation, Newton also shares his thoughts on the law practice management landscape, Clio's expansion into the mid-firm market, and the greater integration of fintech applications in legal.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

One year ago, in September 2023, James Schellhase was named chief executive officer of the alternative legal services provider UnitedLex. The move was particularly significant, as he was only the second person ever to hold that title at the company, having succeeded Dan Reed, who cofounded UnitedLex in 2006 and had been its CEO ever since. Reed is now chairman of the board. A year into his tenure, Schellhase joins LawNext host Bob Ambrogi to discuss how UnitedLex is seeking to embrace innovation and leverage technology to transform legal service delivery. He talks about what this change in leadership means for the company now and into the future, how the company is embracing generative AI to drive its technology-enabled services, and why he believes the company's crown jewel is its India-based workforce. Schellhase is no stranger to the legal industry. He was formerly executive chairman of McCarthyFinch, developer of a suite of AI-driven contract management software that Onit acquired in 2020, and before that was CEO of e-discovery company DiscoverReady, which Consilio acquired in 2018. Before joining UnitedLex, he was most recently CEO of risk management company Breakwater Solutions.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

At its recent customer conference in Salt Lake City, called LEX Summit, the case management company Filevine unveiled a number of product releases and updates. Among them were several products for litigators driven by generative AI, including a first-of-its-kind tool, Depo CoPilot, that helps guide a lawyer during a deposition, and another, DemandsAI, that generates settlement demand letters in the lawyer's own voice and style.  On today's LawNext, we do a deep dive into those new products with the two executives who oversee product development at Filevine, Michael Anderson, chief product officer, and  Alex McLaughlin, vice president of product. LawNext host Bob Ambrogi was at LEX Summit and sat down with Anderson and McLaughlin for this live conversation.  As Ambrogi wrote in his review of Depo CoPilot, it is like having a guardian angel on your shoulder during a deposition, analyzing and transcribing the questions and answers in real time to help ensure the lawyer achieves the desired goals, avoids unclear questions and identifies inconsistent answers. In today's episode, you will learn more about what it can do and how it works.  Note that this is our second episode from LEX Summit. In last week's show, we featured conversations recorded there live with three of Filevine's leaders: Ryan Anderson, the company's cofounder and CEO; Nathan Morris, cofounder and chief culture officer; and Cain Elliott, head legal futurist. Also, Ryan Anderson was previously a guest on this show on April 27, 2022, so if you are interested in hearing from him in greater depth, check that out. Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

In today's episode, we feature three impromptu conversations with leaders of the case management company Filevine. Last week, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi was in Salt Lake City to attend LEX Summit, the Filevine customer conference. While there, he snagged three of the company's top executives for brief, impromptu conversations about the company, its products, and the conference.  In today's show, you will hear from: Ryan Anderson, the company's cofounder and CEO.  Nathan Morris, cofounder and chief culture officer.  Cain Elliott, head legal futurist. Separately, Bob recorded a longer interview about Filevine's product announcements — including several generative AI products — with Michael Anderson, chief product officer, and Alex McLaughlin, vice president of product. Watch for that episode to post soon. By the way, Ryan Anderson was previously a guest on this show on April 27, 2022, so if you are interested in hearing from him in greater depth, check that out. Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.   Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner).   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Matt Rasmussen had worked for some 20 years in litigation technology and support at major law firms, Fortune 500 companies, and litigation services providers, when he wondered why mobile collections had to be so time-consuming, inefficient and invasively overbroad.  As he looked into it, he realized there was a better way to manage mobile collections. Two years ago, Rasmussen and his cofounders brought ModeOne to the legal market. ModeOne's SaaS technology offers the industry's only selective, fully remote, data collection from smart phones and other mobile devices. Now the company's CEO, Rasmussen joins LawNext host Bob Ambrogi to discuss how ModeOne is simplifying the collection of data from mobile devices for e-discovery, legal holds, compliance, and investigations.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

On Oct. 17 and 18, 2024, two of the legal industry's leading experts on knowledge management and innovation, Patrick DiDomenico, founder and CEO of InspireKM Consulting, and Joshua Fireman, president of Fireman & Company, which is owned by Epiq, the global provider of technology-enabled legal services, will present the second-annual KM&I for Legal Conference in New York City.  The conference, which focuses on the latest developments and best practices in knowledge management and innovation in law firms and legal departments, comes at a critical juncture. In recent years, KM and innovation professionals in legal have seen their roles evolve significantly, as law firms have come to better appreciate their importance. Now, with the advent of generative AI, KM and innovation professionals are more essential than ever.  So as the second convening of the KM&I for Legal conference approaches, DiDomenico and Fireman join LawNext to share their thoughts on the state of KM and innovation in law firms and legal organizations, including the impact AI is having on the field. They also offer a preview of what's in store at the conference.  By the way, if you are interested in attending the conference, you can get a 15% discount off the cost of registration with the code LAWNEXT15. LawNext host Bob Ambrogi attended the inaugural version of this conference last year, and, as he wrote in his review after the event, he found it to be substantive, engaging and thought provoking. (He also had the opportunity there to record several interviews for this podcast with some of the speakers and vendors who attended the conference.)   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

In what it says is the first AI agent for law, the legal technology company Spellbook just released Spellbook Associate, an application that can plan and execute complex, multi-step workflows in transactional matters, much as an associate would. This is the same company that introduced the first generative AI copilot for contract drafting and review back in 2022, even before ChatGPT was released to the public.  In today's episode of LawNext, Scott Stevenson, the cofounder and CEO of Spellbook, joins host Bob Ambrogi to tell us all about the new Spellbook Associate, as well as to discuss the company's origins and future. As you will hear, the company pivoted from its original product when Stevenson and his cofounders began exploring large language models and saw their potential for streamlining law practice.  Stevenson, a computer engineer, founded the company in 2019 together with Daniel Di Maria, a former lawyer and now chief revenue officer, and Matt Mayers, a user experience expert and now chief experience officer. When they pivoted in 2022 to launch their AI copilot for lawyers, “customers came pouring in faster than we could keep up with,” he says.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

For at least two decades, artificial intelligence has been used in e-discovery to help surface and prioritize review of potentially responsive documents from large document collections. But while technology-assisted review (TAR) has traditionally been driven by AI in the form of supervised machine learning, some vendors and e-discovery professionals are starting to experiment with the use of generative AI in its place.  So how effective is generative AI for document review in e-discovery? Is it a replacement for traditional TAR or a supplement? Are there other ways in which this rapidly evolving technology can be used in discovery?  On this week's LawNext, we are discussing the application of generative AI in e-discovery. To do so, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by three computer and data scientists from Redgrave Data, a consulting firm that specializes in e-discovery and data science. Today's guests are: Dave Lewis, chief scientific officer, who has over three decades of experience in AI and statistics. Lenora Gray, data scientist, who has worked for more than 15 years in law firm project management and matter support roles. Jeremy Pickens, head of applied science, a pioneer in the fields of collaborative exploratory search and technology assisted review.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Last month, KKR, a major global investment firm, announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Agiloft, the contract lifecycle management company. As part of the deal, the growth equity firm FTV Capital, already an Agiloft investor, is making an additional investment, and another growth equity firm, JMI Equity, is joining as a new investor. The deal was a feather in the cap for Eric Laughlin, who joined Agiloft as CEO in 2020 after leading the Pangea3 business at Thomson Reuters. When Laughlin stepped into that role, Agiloft had been in business for 30 years, and he succeeded a predecessor who had been CEO for nearly all that time. He came aboard just as the company had raised its first-ever outside funding round, tasked with the mission of taking the company to its next level of growth.  During his tenure, the company has earned a reputation as a leading innovator in the CLM space, including in its development of features based on artificial intelligence, and it has significantly grown both its workforce and its global customer base. Laughlin has also strengthened his own reputation as a leader who believes that employee experience is as important as customer experience.  In March 2021, not long after he joined Agiloft, Laughlin was our guest on this show to talk about his plans for the company. On today's episode, he returns to discuss how Agiloft has grown during his four-year tenure and to share his thoughts on the contract lifecycle management landscape, now and into the future.  Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.   Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

As the law practice management company Clio today announced a record $900 million funding round, the largest ever for a cloud legal technology company, at a whopping $3 billion valuation, Clio's founder and CEO Jack Newton joins LawNext for an exclusive podcast interview.  In a conversation recorded last week, ahead of today's announcement, Newton and host Bob Ambrogi dive deep into this investment and what it means for Clio, its customers, and the legal industry. Newton founded the company 16 years ago and has overseen its growth into a global legal tech powerhouse, with more than 1,100 employees worldwide.  “My ambition was always to build this into something that would be a multi-decade company, a hundred-plus year company, and a company that would leave a lasting impact on the legal industry, and a company that would transform the legal industry in a really positive way,” Newton says in the interview. “And what I see this investment round as being is, number one, a huge validation of the success Clio has had in driving that transformation, but more importantly, positioning us to even have a more transformative and more impactful next chapter to our story.”   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Jacqueline Schafer, the founder and CEO of Clearbrief, was inspired to start the company based on her own experiences as a litigator and appellate advocate. A pivotal moment for her came in an asylum case she was handling pro bono, when her ability to point the judge to critical evidence that supported her arguments saved her client from deportation and possible death. At that moment, she later old me, the thought crystalized for her, “If you can show the judge the evidence that really tells your client's story, that's how you win.'” Soon after, Schafer set to work building Clearbrief, AI-powered software that works within Microsoft Word to help lawyers find the best facts to support their legal writing. This week, the four-year-old company announced that it had raised an additional funding round of $4 million, bringing its total funding to nearly $8 million. Along the way, it has racked up numerous awards, including Legalweek's 2023 litigation product of the year, Clio's 2022 Launch//Code Developer Contest, Legalweek's 2022 new law company of the year, and the American Legal Technology Awards' 2021 legal tech startup of the year. Schafer is our guest today on LawNext, as she shares her journey from practicing lawyer to startup founder, describes how Clearbrief helps lawyers in their legal writing, and discusses what this latest investment means for the company and its customers.     Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Eighteen months ago, the first-of-its-kind Judicial Innovation Fellowship launched with the mission of embedding experienced technologists and designers within state, local, and tribal courts to develop technology-based solutions to improve the public's access to justice. Housed within the Institute for Technology Law & Policy at Georgetown University Law Center, the program was designed to be a catalyst for innovation to enable courts to better serve the legal needs of the public.  In August, the program will wrap up its inaugural cohort, which placed three fellows in courts in Kansas, Tennessee and Utah. But even though those three fellowships were successful, our guest today, Jason Tashea, the program's founding director and cofounder, says its future is uncertain because its continued funding is uncertain. “These programs are expensive, they are hard to fundraise for,” he says. In today's episode, Tashea, an entrepreneur, educator, and award-winning journalist, joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss the need for and genesis of the program, the fellowships it supported this year, and his assessment of the program's success. He also shares his thoughts more broadly on the need for innovation in the courts to address the gap in access to justice.  Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

This has been a notable year for BriefCatch, a legal technology company devoted to helping legal professionals improve their legal writing. It started nine months ago, with the company's raise of a $3.5 million seed round, continued with its roll outs of new products and features, and then to its formation of a legal writing advisory panel of judges, advocates and academics.  All of that culminated in BriefCatch's announcement last week of its hires of three legal tech veterans into key executive roles in marketing, sales and product management, all to help lead it into its next stage of growth and development: Lydia Flocchini as chief marketing officer, Darren Schleicher as chief sales officer, and Kyle Bahr as product manager of AI and other new products. Ross Guberman, the founder and CEO of BriefCatch, is our guest today to discuss the company's history, growth, recent news, and future plans – which will include the launch of a suite of AI-enabled products. A former practicing lawyer, he was a legal writing coach and speaker when he conceived of BriefCatch, which he formally launched in 2018.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Since 2010, the nonprofit Free Law Project has been working to make the legal ecosystem more equitable and competitive using technology, data and advocacy. It may be best known for CourtListener, its flagship project that houses an immense collection of court orders and opinions, and for its RECAP suite, which is the largest free collection on the internet of court filings and dockets.  But there is a lot more to the Free Law Project, as you will hear from our guest on today's episode, Michael Lissner, the Free Law Project's cofounder, executive director, and chief technology officer. Lissner started the Free Law Project while earning his master's degree at the University of California Berkeley School of Information, with the assistance of cofounder Brian Carver, who was then an assistant professor at the school and who is now copyright counsel at Google. Since then, the Free Law Project has expanded into a multifaceted source of legal data and tools, all with the goals of providing free access to legal materials and developing technology to enhance legal research and innovation.  The Free Law Project's data also supports a range of academic research and investigative journalism, including having provided data that fueled the recent Pulitzer Prize awarded to news organization ProPublica for its reporting on the financial conflicts of Supreme Court justices.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

In recent months, Epiq, a global company providing technology-enabled legal services, has announced new artificial intelligence and analytics features built using the AI capabilities of Amazon Web Services. These new features include a framework for building, training and deploying bespoke machine learning models as secure APIs for customers; integration of Amazon Bedrock for custom copilot development using a range of commercially available large language models; and other features. Joining LawNext today to provide details on all this and to explain what it means for Epiq's clients is Roger Pilc, president and general manager of Global Legal Solutions at Epiq. With Epiq since 2019, Pilc is responsible for driving strategy and execution around organic growth, strategic acquisitions, product development, technology, and innovation for a broad range of products in areas including information governance, forensics, e-discovery processing and hosting, managed document review, and advanced analytics. Pilc and host Bob Ambrogi talk about Epiq's evolution from primarily a services company to one that also develops its own proprietary technology, while also integrating with a range of technology partners. They also discuss Epiq's recent initiatives to use AI to further enhance its products, including the Epiq Service Cloud, Epiq Discovery, and the Epiq AI Platform. We also hear Pilc's thoughts on how AI will impact the future of legal services and the future of Epiq.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

As this episode is released, Aderant, a technology company that provides business and practice management software for mid- to large-sized law firms worldwide, is in the midst of its Global Momentum user conference, taking place in Nashville. At the conference, the company made a major news announcement – the launch of Stridyn, a new cloud platform that will form the foundation for all the cloud and AI applications the company offers.  That launch marks the culmination of a year in which Aderant has continued to push its cloud-first strategy, most notably through its Expert Sierra cloud-based practice management system, and in which it has increasingly focused on the development of artificial intelligence tools to enhance law business management, including through MADDI, the AI powered virtual associate it introduced last June.  My guest today is the person leading the company through all this, president and CEO Chris Cartrett. A 10-year veteran of the company, he was named president in 2021 and took over as CEO on Jan. 3, 2022. Now, just over two years into the job, and just ahead of Aderant's conference this week, he sat down with me to discuss the news coming out this week and for a broader conversation about the company and the legal industry.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Almost exactly one year ago, a new legal tech startup, The Contract Network, came out of stealth, with a mission to “radically accelerate the time for contract negotiations'' through an AI-powered contract collaboration platform where all parties to a deal engage in a secure and neutral environment.  The company's cofounder and CEO, Jim Wagner, is a legal tech veteran with a track record of starting and leading successful companies in contracting and e-discovery, including having cofounded the e-discovery company DiscoverReady, having been president of the contract management and analytics company Seal Software, and, after Seal was acquired by DocuSign, having been vice president of agreement cloud strategy there.  With The Contract Network, Wagner aims to “change contracts for good” by solving the problem of contract negotiations taking too long and lacking tools for real-time collaboration, communication and transparency among all parties. On today's LawNext, Wagner is our guest, to talk about what he sees as broken with the traditional contract negotiation process and how The Contract Network offers a better option. Given his 30-year career in this industry, he also shares his thoughts on how it has evolved and where we are today.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

With so much focus on the use of large language models in law practice, the Kelvin Large Language Model – or KL3M (pronounced CLEM) for short – stands out as distinct for two reasons. For one, it is the first LLM built entirely from scratch specifically for the legal market. In addition, it is the first LLM in any domain to be training entirely on clean, legally permissible data and to be certified as such by the organization Fairly Trained.  To discuss how KL3M was developed and why this built-from-scratch, domain-specific LLM is significant for the legal industry, our guest for today's LawNext is Jillian Bommarito, chief risk officer at 273 Ventures, the company that developed CLEM. Not only was Bommarito involved in developing KL3M and the data set used to train it, but she also oversaw the process of earning KL3M its Fairly Trained certification.  Regular listeners of LawNext may remember my interview last year with two of the other principals of 273 Ventures, CEO Michael Bommarito, who is Jillian's husband, and Chief Science Officer Daniel Katz, who were on this show just after they conducted the first experiment in having GPT take the bar exam. All three, along with Katz's wife Jessica Katz, had formerly founded the legal AI and consulting company LexPredict, which was acquired in 2018 by the global law company Elevate.  In today's conversation, Bommarito talks about what went into developing the model and creating the dataset to train it, and discusses what it offers the legal market and why and how a law firm would use this model over others that are commercially available.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Timing is everything, it is said, and so it was either ironic or fateful that Maptician, developed as a hoteling platform to help law firms and businesses manage office space, launched in 2019, just before the pandemic and period in which offices once bustling with people turned into downtown ghost towns.  But the company quickly adapted, says its CEO Alaa Pasha, expanding its platform to help law firms manage the new normal of hybrid offices and return to work, and it has continued to evolve to become an all-in-one platform for managing in-office needs and helping firms better plan and use their office space. Pasha, who is our guest on this episode, says that, in his view, the company's real focus is not space, but people, and helping law firms and businesses understand how to optimize their spaces for the people who work in them today, and how to plan their spaces for the years ahead.  Side note: The recording of this conversation came about somewhat serendipitously, when host Bob Ambrogi was scheduled to meet with Pasha for a briefing during the Legalweek conference in January. When Ambrogi showed up at Maptician's booth, the company's publicist offered to record the conversation, and this is the result. Thanks to Maptician for allowing us to share it through this podcast.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

With the tagline “Making Knowledge Work,” the document management company iManage is enormously successful within the legal industry, with more than 4,000 customers across six continents, including 80% of the Am Law 100 and more than 40% of Fortune 100 companies. Just last year, it recently reported, it added more than 300 new law firms and companies as customers.    But over the 30 years since its founding, it hit some speed bumps, of sorts, after it went through a series of acquisitions that led to its ownership by Autonomy and then by Hewlett Packard after HP acquired Autonomy in 2011. The HP-Autonomy deal famously turned into a fiasco when HP claimed Autonomy had fraudulently inflated its value, causing it to write off nearly $8.8 billion of the $11.1 billion purchase price, and the repercussions of that deal continue to reverberate, with Autonomy's founder currently on trial in San Francisco for criminal fraud charges.  With iManage, through no fault of its own, caught up in that morass, its original founding management team, led by Neil Araujo, swooped in and bought back the company in 2015. It was, Araujo now says, an opportunity to reboot and apply everything they had learned about what to do and what not to do to build a successful company.  Neil Araujo is our guest in this episode, to share the story of how iManage became the success it is today and to give us a preview of what lies ahead on its product and development roadmap, including its plans for expanding its use of generative artificial intelligence. . Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

March 1 marked the culmination of an ambitious and audacious project to digitize and provide free and open access to all official court decisions ever published in the United States. Called the Caselaw Access Project, it came about, starting in 2015, through an unusual partnership between Harvard Law School and a Silicon Valley-based legal research startup called Ravel Law.  The massive undertaking involved scanning nearly 40 million pages from some 40,000 law books and converting it all into machine-readable text files, creating a collection that included 6.4 million published cases, some dating as far back as 1658. While Harvard's Library Innovation Lab did all the work, Ravel — and later LexisNexis after it acquired Ravel in 2017  — footed the bill.   Harvard completed that digitization in 2018, making those cases available for free to the general public, but until March 1, 2024, any commercial use of the cases was restricted by the agreement between Harvard and Ravel (and later LexisNexis). The March 1 milestone marked the full release of the cases, free of any restrictions.  On today's LawNext, we will get the inside story of the history of the Caselaw Access Project and talk about the significance of this final lifting of all restrictions on the data. How did the partnership ever come about in the first place? What was the scanning process like? What does this data mean for the future of access to law, particularly in the face of generative AI?  To do all of that, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by three guests who played instrumental roles in the project: Daniel Lewis, the cofounder and CEO of Ravel Law, who is now CEO of the contract review company LegalOn.  Adam Ziegler, the former director of Harvard's Library Innovation Lab and the Caselaw Access Project (who recently wrote a first-person account of the project).. Jack Cushman, the current director of the Library Innovation Lab.  Nik Reed, the cofounder and COO of Ravel Law, and now senior vice president of product, R&D and design at Knowable, was also scheduled to be on the show, but had to cancel as of the recording time.  Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.