Podcasts about ravel law

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.  

Today's guest is Daniel Lewis, CEO of LegalOn Technologies, a company that uses AI to help legal teams find and fix contract risks. While a student at Stanford Law School, Daniel discovered his interest in legal tech, and soon envisioned himself going into business. Upon graduating, he founded Ravel Law, with the goal of building a better case law research experience by making use of new technology and taking a more data-driven approach. The company was ultimately acquired by LexisNexis, and Daniel served as senior director of product management and later, VP and GM of Practical Guidance & Analytical. He then went on to his current role as CEO of LegalOn's US business. Additionally, Daniel is an investor in startups across various sectors, including education, health, legal and privacy, and enterprise. In our discussion, Daniel talks about how he found the legal tech path, his current venture at LegalOn—and how the company is incorporating generative AI in its services, and what he values in the businesses he invests in.

Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Jonathan Heiliger (@heiligerj), General Partner at Vertex Ventures US, a boutique fund that invests early (often the first!) in enterprising founders who make it possible for new applications and services to be born. Jonathan and his partners have created $6B+ of value as founders themselves, and 'first check' backers. Jonathan co-founded Vertex US in 2015 to empower the next generation of pioneers who are passionate about solving hard problems with tech.Before Vertex US, Jonathan was General Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, where he led investments in Lytro (acquired by Google), Periscope, Quora, and Ravel Law (acquired by LexisNexis), in addition to co-founding Coolan (acquired by Salesforce). He spent the previous five years at Facebook as Vice President of Infrastructure and Operations, leading global infrastructure, site architecture, and internal systems as the company scaled from 35 million to nearly 1 billion users.Earlier in his career, Jonathan held executive engineering roles at Walmart and Danger (acquired by Microsoft) and spent several years as Chief Operating Officer for Loudcloud/Opsware (IPO then acquired by HP for $1.6 billion). At 19, he co-founded and was Chief Technology Officer of GlobalCenter, one of the first web hosting providers and the world's first native-optical IP network, serving CNN, Netscape, Playboy, and Yahoo! as initial customers. He also founded Global Crossing's venture capital group.Today, through his role at Vertex US, Jonathan holds board seats for a number of their portfolio companies. Looking ahead, he is particularly excited about innovations that will improve how and where we live, specifically in construction and real estate.Website: Vertex Ventures USLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jheiliger/Twitter: @heiligerjEmail: jh@vertexventures.comShow Notes: Where and how Vertex Ventures US is investing How their focus has shifted since launching in the U.S. in 2015 The major changes Jonathan has observed in the VC industry over the years What helps Jonathan and Vertex stay laser focused despite the quick-paced nature of the industry Navigating fund strategy as the market changes How both Vitalize and Vertex address ownership targets How Jonathan approaches mentorship and hard conversations with founders Jonathan's angel investing and advising journey  More about the show:The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 300+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series. The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors. The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital. More about us:Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.The Vitalize Team:Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVCCaroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/

Ralph Baxter spent nearly a quarter century as chairman and CEO of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, leading its growth from a regional San Francisco law firm specializing in municipal finance to one of the world’s largest firms with offices worldwide and a diverse array of practices. Along the way, both Baxter and Orrick earned kudos for their many innovations in the delivery and pricing of legal services and the staffing and structure of the firm.  Now retired from Orrick, Baxter serves as an advisor and consultant devoted to inspiring positive transformation in the ways legal services are delivered globally. In particular, he believes that technology and process design enable legal services to be delivered better, faster and cheaper, and to be available at reasonable cost to all who need them, and his goal is to help make this happen.  Baxter is also an advisor to a number of legal organizations. He was chairman of the advisory board of the Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute, is on the board of directors of Intapp, and is on the legal advisory board of LegalZoom. He was previously on the boards of directors of both Lex Machina and Ravel Law prior to their acquisitions by LexisNexis.  He is a fellow and senior advisor to CodeX, the Stanford University Center for Law and Informatics, and is a member of the advisory boards of the Stanford Law School Center on the Legal Profession, the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession, and the Georgetown Law School Center for the Study of the Legal Profession.   Included in 2009 in the ABA Journal’s inaugural class of Legal Rebels, Baxter was an elementary school teacher before attending law school. Last year, he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat from West Virginia, losing in the primary.  NEW: We are now on Patreon! Subscribe to our page to support the production, as well as access show transcripts and bonus content. Comment on this show: Record a voice comment on your mobile phone and send it to info@lawnext.com.

The recently launched Caselaw Access Project is the capstone to a massive undertaking executed over three years to digitize all U.S. case law, some 6.4 million cases dating back to 1658. Leading the project was Adam Ziegler, director of the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School, which partnered with Ravel Law to digitize the school’s entire library of U.S. cases. In this episode of LawNext, Ziegler joins host Bob Ambrogi to describe the project and its significance for legal researchers. He also discusses other projects underway at the Library Innovation Lab and touches on some of the lessons he learned as cofounder of a legal tech startup. In addition to directing the Library Innovation Lab, Ziegler is an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and an adjunct professor at Suffolk University Law School, where he co-teaches “Lawyering in the Age of Smart Machines.” Earlier, he founded Mootus, an online platform for collaborative legal argument, and practiced law for several years with firms in Boston and Washington, D.C. Comment on this show: Record a voice comment on your mobile phone and send it to info@lawnext.com.

What does it mean to practice data-driven law? On this episode, Bob speaks with Jeff Pfeifer, the LexisNexis vice president charged with driving overall product strategy for LexisNexis Legal and Professional, North America. Over the past several years, Pfeifer has spearheaded a series of acquisitions and product developments, all with the goal of establishing LexisNexis as the leader in legal analytics and enabling what he calls data-driven law. Pfeifer oversaw the company’s 2016 acquisitions of legal analytics companies Lex Machina and Intelligize and the 2017 acquisition of Ravel Law. Most recently, Pfeifer led the roll-out of Lexis Analytics, a suite of tools that organizes all of LexisNexis’s major analytics acquisitions and products (as well as a couple new products) into three categories of analytics – litigation, regulatory and transactional. Bob talks with Jeff about these acquisitions, the launch of Lexis Analytics, and his vision of the data-driven lawyer. Pfeifer is a 29-year veteran of LexisNexis. Before taking on his current role in 2015 as vice president of product management, he was vice president, primary law and Shepard’s, and president and CEO of LexisNexis Puerto Rico. Earlier, he was vice president of marketing. He was recognized this year as among the Fastcase 50, honoring the “smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries, and leaders in the law.” Comment on this show: Record a voice comment on your mobile phone and send it to info@lawnext.com.

Duration: 22:08 The legal profession is hardly immune to the changes being wrought by technology. And Stanford University’s CodeX Center—a partnership between its law school and computer science department—has been a significant contributor to those changes in recent years as an incubator for legal tech startups. Among the companies that have roots at CodeX are Bay Area legal analytics firms Lex Machina and Ravel Law. CodeX also has tried to give lawyers and other industry professionals a glimpse over the horizon with its annual “FutureLaw” conference. If there was an overriding theme at this year’s event on April 6, it was that the current law firm model is unsustainable and isn’t serving the needs of clients or society generally. University of Southern California Law Professor Gillian Hadfield, in a keynote, said that one survey of large company general counsels showed 70 percent would not recommend their primary law firm and that 80 percent are reducing the work they send out.   RELATED ARTICLE: Bigger Data, ‘Tech Terror’ and Diversity Disparities Mark CodeEx’s Fifth FutureLaw   In this podcast, we take you inside the FutureLaw conference to hear from some of the speakers and attendees about how technologies like legal data analytics are evolving, how law firms can make themselves more efficient by embracing them, and what the limitations are. It’s not all doom and gloom. “I don’t think that the law firm or the lawyer will go away, that they will be completely disrupted and there will only be robo-lawyers,” said Roland Vogl, executive director of CodeX. “I think a lot of those technologies that we’re talking about are lawyer-enhancing.”

I spoke with Daniel Lewis, the CEO and co-founder of Ravel Law, a legal research, analytics, and visualization company. Forbes named Lewis to its 2015 list of 30 under 30 in Law & Policy. We discussed the genesis of Ravel Law, the impact of data analytics and visualization on legal decision-making, and the future of legal practice, among other topics.

I spoke with Daniel Lewis, the CEO and co-founder of Ravel Law, a legal research, analytics, and visualization company. Forbes named Lewis to its 2015 list of 30 under 30 in Law & Policy. We discussed the genesis of Ravel Law, the impact of data analytics and visualization on legal decision-making, and the future of legal practice, among other topics.

I spoke with Daniel Lewis, the CEO and co-founder of Ravel Law, a legal research, analytics, and visualization company. Forbes named Lewis to its 2015 list of 30 under 30 in Law & Policy. We discussed the genesis of Ravel Law, the impact of data analytics and visualization on legal decision-making, and the future of legal practice, among other topics.

I spoke with Daniel Lewis, the CEO and co-founder of Ravel Law, a legal research, analytics, and visualization company. Forbes named Lewis to its 2015 list of 30 under 30 in Law & Policy. We discussed the genesis of Ravel Law, the impact of data analytics and visualization on legal decision-making, and the future of legal practice, among other topics.

I spoke with Daniel Lewis, the CEO and co-founder of Ravel Law, a legal research, analytics, and visualization company. Forbes named Lewis to its 2015 list of 30 under 30 in Law & Policy. We discussed the genesis of Ravel Law, the impact of data analytics and visualization on legal decision-making, and the future of legal practice, among other topics.

Ed Walters started as a lawyer in a big law firm in Washington D.C. In the late 1990's, he was approached by a client asking him to research a relatively new legal issue without using LexisNexis or WestLaw, as they were trying to reduce online legal research costs. His inability to do this set off a chain of events leading him to create the company Fastcase. His story begs the question, are lawyers simply paying too much for online legal research sources? What are some ways particularly solo and small firm attorneys can reduce research overheads in their practice? And when is it necessary to pay for LexisNexis or WestLaw? In this episode of New Solo, Adriana Linares interviews Ed Walters about his experience starting Fastcase, how it interacts with the bigger legal research companies and smaller startups, and the right steps for solo practitioners to take in choosing an online research source. Linares and Walters begin by discussing the differences between a free resource like Google Scholar, a mid-range company like Fastcase, and a larger company like LexisNexis. If an attorney has a boutique practice and needs treatises or specialized databases, Walters says, they will need a big online research company. Otherwise, the lawyer might be paying too much. He urges practitioners to check their local bar, state bar, and other associations or organizations for member benefits that often include research and even practice management tools. There are three startup companies that Walters encourages lawyers to research: Casetext, which focuses on crowdsourcing, Ravel Law, which uses data visualization, and Judicata, which uses semantic analysis to find relationships based on meanings. He encourages all lawyers, but especially those in small firms, to research different options and find the one that fits their practice best. Ed Walters is the CEO and co-founder of Fastcase, an online legal research software company based in Washington D.C. Before founding Fastcase, Ed worked at Covington and Burling where his practice focused on corporate advisory work for software companies and sports leagues, and intellectual property litigation. He has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The University of Chicago Law Review, The Green Bag, and Legal Times, and has spoken extensively on legal publishing around the country. He is an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches The Law of Robots. Special thanks to our sponsor, Solo Practice University.