LawNext

Populus Radio, Robert Ambrogi

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LawNext is a weekly podcast hosted by Bob Ambrogi, who is internationally known for his writing and speaking on legal technology and innovation. Each week, Bob interviews the innovators and entrepreneurs who are driving what’s next in the legal industry. From legal technology startups to new law firm business models to enhancing access to justice, Bob and his guests explore the future of law and legal practice.

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258 episodes

Ep 242: The Inside Story of the Caselaw Access Project, with Three of the People Who Made It Happen

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 https://lil.law.harvard.edu/ 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: __ __ 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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

50m
Mar 25
Ep 241: InfoTrack’s Mission to Revolutionize Litigation Services Such as E-filing and Process Serving, with CEO Ed Watts

InfoTrack https://www.infotrack.com/ may be one of the fastest growing yet least known legal technology companies in the United States. You may know it more through its brands, including ServeNow for finding process servers, One Legal for California court filing, LawToolBox for court calendaring, and the Legal Talk Network group of legal podcasts.  Our guest today, Ed Watts, CEO of InfoTrack in the U.S., says the company is on a mission to innovate and even revolutionize litigation services and the litigation workflow. Already, its products are used every day by lawyers throughout the United States to file court cases, track court dockets, search court records, and arrange service of process, and it integrates with most major law practice management platforms. InfoTrack in the U.S. actually grew out of a company founded in Australia in 2012, when it was spun out of the LEAP law practice management platform. InfoTrack expanded first to the U.K. and then in 2016 to the U.S.  Since coming to this country, it has expanded both organically and through acquisitions, including in 2020, when it acquired two legal tech companies, LawToolBox, the court calendaring company, and One Legal, a California provider of litigation support services such as court filing, service of process, and document retrieval, and in 2021, when it acquired Lawgical, the parent company of ServeNow, Serve Manager, and the Legal Talk Network.  Watts has been with the company since before it spun out from LEAP, and says he was employee number one when it expanded to the U.S. He and host Bob Ambrogi talk about the company’s history, where it is today, and its plans for future growth.    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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

46m
Mar 18
Ep 240: The New Beneficial Ownership Reporting Requirement and How Legal Tech Can Help Companies Comply

The arrival of 2024 brought a new reporting requirement for more than 32 million smaller companies in the United States. The new requirement, which came about as part of the federal Corporate Transparency Act of 2021, means that many companies will now have to report information about their beneficial owners — the individuals who ultimately control the company. With new requirements for companies to collect, document and submit previously unreported information – and with many companies confused about what the law means for them -- legal tech companies are stepping up to help, with new products specifically designed to facilitate understanding and compliance.  One company that is taking the lead on this is Wolters Kluwer. It has launched a beneficial ownership platform for legal, compliance and accounting professionals, and enhanced its Legisway platform for corporate legal departments with new beneficial ownership functionality.  On today’s episode, we’ll dig into this new law and its requirements, and hear about how technology is helping companies comply. To do that, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by three executives from Wolters Kluwer: __ __ One further note: Last week, after we recorded this conversation, a federal court in Alabama ruled that the Corporate Transparency Act is unconstitutional. The ruling is limited to the two plaintiffs who filed the suit, and the federal government said it will file an appeal. Meanwhile, it is expected that the government will continue to enforce these new beneficial ownership rules.    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.   __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

43m
Mar 11
Ep 239: Oddr CEO Milan Bobde On How AI Can Help Law Firms Stem Revenue Leakage and Turn Invoices into Cash

Can AI help law firms stem revenue leakage and more efficiently turn their invoices into collected cash? That is the premise behind Oddr https://www.oddr.com/, a legal tech startup that recently launched what it says is the legal industry’s first AI-powered invoice to cash platform, centralizing law firm billing, collections, payments and reconciliation in a single product. At the Legalweek conference in New York in January, where the platform was officially launched, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi sat down with Milan Bobde, Oddr’s cofounder and CEO, to record this conversation about the company and how it can help law firms streamline billing and improve collections. Before starting Oddr, Bobde was senior director of product management at the enterprise software company Intapp and earlier worked at Thomson Reuters Elite as manager of a diverse portfolio of products.   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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

21m
Mar 05
Ep 238: Thomson Reuters’ AI Strategy for Legal, with Mike Dahn, Head of Westlaw, and Joel Hron, Head of AI

On this episode of LawNext: A conversation about Thomson Reuters’ https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/legal strategy around generative artificial intelligence with two of the executives most directly responsible for its development and implementation.  In a year dominated by discussion of generative AI and its potential impact on the legal profession, Thomson Reuters has played a leading role. It started in June, when the company announced its $650 million acquisition https://www.lawnext.com/2023/06/the-rumors-were-true-thomson-reuters-acquires-casetext-for-650m-cash.html of the legal research and AI company Casetext and the CoCounsel generative AI tool Casetext had developed in collaboration with OpenAI.   Then, in November, Thomson Reuters made good on its promise to integrate generative AI within its flagship legal research platform, introducing AI Assisted Research in Westlaw Precision. Soon after that, it rolled out generative AI within Practical Law, its legal know-how product. What does this all mean for legal research and legal software, now and into the future? Today we go deep into TR’s AI development with two of the company’s leaders in this area:  __ __ We talk about the development of AI Assisted Research in Westlaw Precision, the company’s broader AI product strategy, its acquisition of CoCounsel and where that fits in its AI strategy, how the company is protecting against hallucinations and ensuring security, and the future of AI at Thomson Reuters and 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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

57m
Feb 28
Ep 237: How A New Kind of Justice Worker Could Narrow the Justice Gap, with Nikole Nelson, CEO of Frontline Justice

In November, the organization Frontline Justice launched with the mission of addressing the escalating access to justice crisis by empowering a new category of legal helper, the justice worker. The organization has an ambitious mission: To clear the way for justice workers to exist in all 50 states by 2035.  In pursuit of that mission, it is backed by an impressive founding team that includes Rebecca Sandefur, one of the world’s leading scholars on access to justice (who was on LawNext in 2020); Matthew Burnett, senior program officer for the Access to Justice Research Initiative at the American Bar Foundation (ABF); Jim Sandman, president emeritus of the Legal Services Corporation (on LawNext in 2019); and other notable names.  On this episode of LawNext, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by Nikole Nelson, the CEO of Frontline Justice. Before starting there in November, Nelson had been executive director of Alaska Legal Services Corporation, where she was instrumental in launching a statewide community justice worker project that won the 2019 World Justice Challenge. She was also instrumental in bringing about an Alaska Supreme Court rule change in 2022 allowing justice workers supervised by Alaska Legal Services to provide limited scope legal help in certain situations.  Nelson describes how justice workers helped Alaska Legal Services better serve the legal problems of people across the state’s remotest regions, and how new models of justice workers in other states could similarly help reach those who are not now receiving adequate help for their legal problems. She also recognizes that Frontline Justice faces obstacles in achieving its mission, and she shares her thoughts on how it can overcome them.  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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

46m
Feb 13
Ep 236: How One Legal Aid Program Is Creating A Culture Of Innovation To Enhance Access to Justice

At a time when some 92% of the civil legal problems of low-income Americans receive no or inadequate legal help, innovative measures are needed to close the justice gap. Recognizing that, Legal Aid of North Carolina https://legalaidnc.org/, a program that provides free legal services to low-income people through the state, last year became the first legal services program in the United States to launch an Innovation Lab, devoted to identifying and implementing new solutions for bridging the justice gap.  Development of the lab was initiated by Ashley Campbell, who returned to LANC as its CEO in 2022 after having worked there at the start of her career, and Scheree Gilchrist, a longtime LANC attorney who Campbell named as LANC’s first chief innovation officer soon after she became CEO. Also instrumental in creating the lab was Jeffrey M. Kelly, partner at the law firm Nelson Mullins, who now serves as chair of the lab’s advisory board.  Campbell, Gilchrist and Kelly are our guests in today’s episode. Host Bob Ambrogi interviewed them live last week at the Legal Services Corporation’s Innovations in Technology Conference in Charlotte, N.C. The three had just spoken together as part of a panel on creating a culture of innovation in legal services. In this interview, they share their thoughts on that and provide details on the work of the Innovation Lab.    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. __ __ If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

46m
Feb 05
Ep 235: How the American Arbitration Association embraced Generative AI, with CEO Bridget McCormack and CIO Diana Didia

One year ago, Bridget Mary McCormack, the former chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, took over the helm of the American Arbitration Association, the largest private provider of alternative dispute resolution services in the world, as its president and chief executive officer. While on the court, McCormack was a leading voice for innovating the justice system to expand access to justice, and since joining the AAA, she is credited with having “supercharged” its innovation efforts – particularly with regard to its adoption of generative AI.  Also critical to those innovation efforts has been Diana Didia https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianadidia/, senior vice president and chief information and innovation officer at the AAA, who had helped ignite the association’s innovation efforts well before McCormack arrived and whose work not only set the stage for continued innovation but has been critical in helping the organization drive forward into embracing generative AI.  Our guests on today’s LawNext, McCormack and Didia – along with many others on their team – have been working full bore over the past year to drive further innovation at the AAA and to integrate AI into its own work and into the broader field of dispute resolution. They recently launched the AAAi Lab, a website supporting AAA users, arbitrators, in-house counsel and law firms with policy guidance, educational webinars and tools for embracing generative AI, and also ClauseBuilder, a generative AI tool for writing clear and effective ADR clauses.  When we spoke, they were preparing to present this week on the AAA’s innovation efforts and its adoption of AI as part of a panel at Legalweek in New York.  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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

46m
Jan 29
Ep 234: How Courts, Lawyers and Legal Tech Companies Should Handle Sealed Court Documents: A Panel Discussion

At a time when legal technology companies are making it easier to access and analyze court documents, what should – and should not – be done to protect confidential court documents that are sealed from public access?   This question came to a head last July, when a federal court in North Carolina took the drastic step of issuing a standing order that effectively banned lawyers in that district from using third-party service providers such as PacerPro, RECAP or DocketBird. That order came on the heels of a memorandum from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts that – while it didn’t outright ban the use of such service providers – it did urge courts to warn filers to be cautious about using third-party services and software. Were these actions justified? Is there reason to be concerned about third-party providers? And what exactly is the best way to protect sealed documents?  To answer these questions, the legal tech company PacerPro brought together a panel of experts for a live program presented during the annual meeting of the National Docketing Association in Boston in October. On the panel were:  __ __ I moderated the panel and recorded it for this podcast. Thanks to the panelists, the NDA, and PacerPro for allowing me to do that.  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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

1h 2m
Jan 22
Ep 233: Zen and the Art of Law Practice Management, with ZenCase’s CEO TJ Fraser and COO Olivia Mockel

In 2013, when Florida lawyer TJ Fraser set out to find a law practice management solution for his firm, he tested just about every product on the market, he says, but he could not find one that solved the problems he encountered in his day-to-day practice. So, rather than keep looking, he and his team decided to build the solution they needed for themselves.  By 2018, they had dubbed the software ZenCase, and in 2021, after continuing to develop and refine it, they migrated their first 50-plus user law firm onto the platform and officially launched it commercially to the legal market at large. On today’s LawNext, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by Fraser, who is now the CEO of ZenCase, and Olivia Mockel, its president and COO. Mockel recently moved to ZenCase after several years in leadership roles at other practice management companies, including most recently as CEO of PCLaw | Time Matters, a joint venture between LEAP and LexisNexis. So what makes ZenCase different from other practice management platforms and what types of law firms is it suited for? In today’s episode, we’ll hear from Fraser and Mockel about all that and more, including how they are incorporating generative AI and their plans for future development.    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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

41m
Jan 16
Ep 232: An Inside Look At Driving Innovation within A Major Law Firm and A Major Legal Department

What are the nuances of driving innovation within a law firm or legal department? For an inside perspective on that question, we speak with Rachel Dooley, who at the time of this recording was chief innovation officer at the law firm Goodwin Procter, and Ilona Logvinova, managing counsel and head of innovation for McKinsey Legal. Dooley and Logvinova spoke together at the recent Knowledge Management & Innovation for Legal Conference https://www.kmiforlegal.com/ in New York City, sharing their views and insights on innovation from their unique perspectives. Shortly after they spoke, they sat down live with LawNext host Bob Ambrogi to record this conversation about innovation in legal.  Note that since we recorded this conversation, Dooley has left Goodwin Procter. This is the third LawNext episode featuring conversations recorded at the conference. To listen to the prior two, check out: __ __ The conference was organized by Patrick DiDomenico, president and founder of InspireKM Consulting, and Joshua Fireman https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuafireman/, president and founder of the strategic consulting firm Fireman & Company, an Epiq Company.  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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

23m
Jan 10
Ep 231: The Founders of Two Legal Tech Startups: Nicole Clark of Trellis and Kevin Walker and Bryan Davis of Centari

Today on LawNext, we feature two brief, back-to-back interviews with the founders of two separate legal tech startups, both recorded live during the inaugural Knowledge Management & Innovation for Legal Conference held recently in New York City.  First up is Nicole Clark, cofounder and CEO of Trellis https://trellis.law/, an AI-powered state court research and analytics platform. (Clark was previously on LawNext in January 2002.) Then, in the second part of the show, we speak with the cofounders of Centari, an AI-powered knowledge management and dealmaking platform, Kevin Walker, the company’s CEO, and Bryan Gilbert Davis, its CTO.  LawNext host Bob Ambrogi was at the conference and recorded both of these interviews live there, where both of these companies were sponsors and exhibitors. The conference was organized by Patrick DiDomenico, president and founder of InspireKM Consulting, and Joshua Fireman https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuafireman/, president and founder of the strategic consulting firm Fireman & Company, an Epiq Company.  For more from the conference, check out the last episode of LawNext, which featured interviews with the two keynote speakers from that conference: Andrea Alliston, partner and leader of knowledge and practice innovation programs at Fasken, Canada’s largest law firm, and Mark Smolik, chief legal officer at DHL.    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. __ __ If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

34m
Jan 03
Ep 230: KM Keynotes: Andrea Alliston, KM Leader At Fasken, and Mark Smolik, GC at DHL, On Disruption and Innovation in Legal

Today’s episode features two interviews on disruption and innovation in legal, with the two keynote speakers from the inaugural Knowledge Management & Innovation for Legal Conference https://www.kmiforlegal.com/ held recently in New York City: Andrea Alliston, partner and leader of knowledge and practice innovation programs at Fasken, Canada’s largest law firm, and Mark Smolik, chief legal officer at DHL Supply Chain Americas.  This conference, held in New York in October, was organized by Patrick DiDomenico, president and founder of InspireKM Consulting, and Joshua Fireman https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuafireman/, president and founder of the strategic consulting firm Fireman & Company, an Epiq Company. This was the first year of this conference, which was organized to fill the gap left when another KM conference – one that had long been held in New York – moved to Chicago.  The two-day conference featured two keynote speakers. Andrea Alliston kicked off the first day with a talk on leading through change, complexity and disruption. Mark Smolik gave the second-day keynote, speaking on the topic of winning strategies for new business: insights on innovation from a chief legal officer.  LawNext host Bob Ambrogi was at the conference and sat down live with each of the speakers after their keynotes for the interviews in today’s episode.    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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

33m
Dec 18, 2023
Ep 229: AffiniPay CEO Dru Armstrong on the Intersection of Fintech, Legal Tech and AI

Dru Armstrong was named CEO of AffiniPay, the parent company of LawPay https://www.lawpay.com/, in July 2021. Less than a year later, AffiniPay shook up the legal tech landscape by acquiring MyCase, one of the leading law practice management platforms, in a deal that also included four other practice management products: CASEPeer for personal injury firms, Docketwise https://www.docketwise.com/ for immigration practices, Soluno for billing and accounting (which it recently sold), and Woodpecker for document automation.  One reason that deal was so notable was that, until then, LawPay had been the legal tech equivalent of Switzerland – a neutral integration partner with virtually every practice management platform out there. But in acquiring one of the major players in the market, that legal tech Switzerland seemed to suddenly lose its neutrality.  Now, two and a half years into the job as Affinipay CEO, Armstrong is our guest on this episode of LawNext to discuss that acquisition, where the company is today, and why the marriage of fintech and legal tech matters to legal practitioners. She also shares her plans for the company’s future, including how it will incorporate generative AI across its various products.  Armstrong and host Bob Ambrogi spoke live in Miami at the TLTF Summit https://www.tltfsummit.com/, a conference produced by the Legal Tech Fund, a VC fund focused on legal tech, where she spoke on a panel on the intersection of fintech and legal tech. She was previously on this podcast in June 2022, at the time the MyCase acquisition was announced, and was also on our Legaltech Week 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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

42m
Dec 11, 2023
Ep 228: The Law Students Working to End Racism in the Legal System

Each year for the past three years, the LexisNexis African Ancestry Network LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation Fellowship has awarded fellowships to promising law students to participate in research projects related to eliminating racism in the legal system. This year, 15 students received fellowships of $10,000 each to spend nine months working in teams to research one of five “cluster projects” that the fellowship program targeted for the potential to make a meaningful impact.  The students  – all from law schools that are members of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Law School Consortium – recently published the findings of their research in the publication, Advancing and Impacting Equity in the Legal System, and on today’s LawNext, we are joined by two of those students to share more details about their work:  __ __ Also joining the show today is Adonica Black, director of global diversity and inclusion at LexisNexis, who helped coordinate the fellowship program.   In previous episodes of this podcast, we interviewed students who took part in this program in 2021 and 2022. Here are those episodes: __ __   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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

44m
Dec 04, 2023
Ep 227: Erika Harold, Executive Director, Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism

On this episode of LawNext: An interview recorded live with Erika Harold, executive director of the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, an organization charged with working to enhance civility and professionalism and to eliminate bias within the legal profession.  A former litigator, Harold was named executive director in April 2022, to succeed retiring executive director Jayne Reardon, who has also been a guest on this podcast. A nationally recognized advocate of bullying prevention efforts, Harold led the commission this summer in launching a statewide initiative to assess the prevalence and impact of bullying in the legal profession and recommend best practices for preventing it.  Erika is also a former Miss America – the sixth Black woman ever to hold that title – and, as you’ll hear, she entered that competition to help fund her education at Harvard Law School, from which she graduated debt free. In 2014, she ran in the Republican primary for Congress to represent Illinois's 13th congressional district. In 2018, she was the Republican candidate for Illinois attorney general.  LawNext host Bob Ambrogi had the opportunity to sit down live with Harold to record this conversation during the Clio Cloud Conference in Nashville in October.    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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

33m
Nov 20, 2023
Ep 226: Clio Double Header: Chief Technology Officer Jonathan Watson and Chief Product Officer Hemant Kashyap

On today’sLawNext, it’s a Clio double header, featuring two separate interviews with two of Clio’s top product-focused executives – one with Jonathan Watson, its chief technology officer, and the other with Hemant Kashyap, chief product officer  – both recorded live at the Clio Cloud Conference in Nashville in October.  Even though I interviewed Watson and Kashyap separately, their roles at Clio are intertwined. As CTO, Watson was previously responsible for both technology and product. That changed last June, when Kashyap joined the company as its first chief product officer. Now, they tell me, they often work as partners on developing products and delivering them to Clio’s customers.  At the conference, Clio introduced an array of major new products and product updates, in what it called its most expansive product update ever in its 15-year history. These included Clio Duo, a generative artificial intelligence tool that will be built natively into all Clio products starting in 2024; a personal injury add-on for Clio offering a suite of features for PI lawyers; and Clio File, an electronic court filing and service feature built directly in Clio Manage, making it the first law practice management platform to directly incorporate e-filing. In both of today’s interviews, we talk about those new products and others, as well as the company’s longer-term product roadmap. Both Watson and Kashyapp also share their thoughts on generative AI and its potential impact on legal technology and legal practice.  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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

44m
Nov 13, 2023
Ep 225: Did EyeLevel.ai Cause Pras Michel’s Lawyer To Botch His Defense? Cofounder Neil Katz Says That Is ‘Total Nonsense’

Did Pras Michel’s lawyer botch his defense by relying on an AI program to create his closing argument? That’s what the former Fugees rapper claims in asking a court to overturn his April conviction in an illegal foreign influence scheme.  Michel says his lawyer, David Kenner, made a “frivolous and ineffectual” closing argument because he relied on an experimental AI program called EyeLevel.ai. Michel also alleges that Kenner and cocounsel Alon Israely had undisclosed financial interests in the AI company that motivated them to use the AI in his case as a marketing ploy.  But Neil Katz, the cofounder and COO of EyeLevel.ai, calls those claims “creative fiction” and “total nonsense.” Katz joins LawNext today to give his version of what happened in the Michel case and to tell us more about EyeLevel.ai, a company he says helps businesses and legal professionals build hallucination-free AI applications using private data.    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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

34m
Nov 06, 2023
Ep 224: Unpacking the 2023 Clio Legal Trends Report, with Joshua Lenon, Clio’s Lawyer in Residence

On Oct. 9, during the Clio Cloud Conference in Nashville, the law practice management company Clio released the 2023 edition of its annual Legal Trends Report. Since it was first published in 2016, the report has established itself as a benchmark of the state of law practice and technology adoption among smaller law firms.  Among the findings in this year’s report were two pieces of particularly good news: Law firms have seen a remarkable increase in productivity in the years since that first report came out in 2016, and legal professionals are actively embracing technology to boost their efficiency and performance. This year’s report also introduces a new metric for measuring a law firm’s financial health: Lockup.  With much to unpack from this year’s Legal Trends Report, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi sat down with Joshua Lenon, lawyer in residence at Clio and one of the principal members of the team that develops the report, to get all the details. They spoke in a live interview recorded during the Clio 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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

33m
Oct 30, 2023
Ep 223: A Conversation About Wrongful Convictions, with Brian Banks and Michael Semanchik

This week, LawNext veers slightly off-topic for a conversation about wrongful convictions. But, as you’ll hear from our guests, there is a legal tech angle, even to this.  At the recent Clio Cloud Conference, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi had the opportunity to sit down for a live conversation with one of the keynote speakers, Brian Banks, whose aspirations for a career in the NFL were sidetracked when, at age 16, he was falsely accused of sexual assault, resulting in his accepting a plea bargain that put him in prison for five years. It was an experience that has made Banks a powerful advocate for criminal justice reform.  Joining Banks for that conversation was Michael Semanchik, the lawyer who helped clear Banks’ name while working as managing attorney of the California Innocence Project. Recently, Semanchik launched a new project, The Innocence Center, where he is executive director. He also hosts one of the best new podcasts of 2023, the soon-to-be-renamed California Innocence Center Podcast.  For Banks, there was a happy ending to the story, in that he did clear his name and he even got to play in the NFL. But wrongful convictions continue to plague the criminal justice system. Today we’ll hear Banks’ story and explore what the system can do to keep other innocent people out of prison.    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. __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

30m
Oct 23, 2023
Ep 222: Clio CEO Jack Newton On Why It’s More Important Than Ever for Lawyers to Leverage Tech

In his keynote address at the recently concluded 2023 Clio Cloud Conference, Jack Newton, the founder and CEO of Clio https://www.clio.com/, said that we are at a time in the legal industry when leveraging technology is more important for lawyers than ever before. Technology, he said, enables lawyers to amplify their impact, and when they do that, they can achieve exponential outcomes.  This was the 11th year of the Clio Cloud Conference, and the 15th year in business for the company that produces it. In a recent post about the conference, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi wrote that Clio has grown over the years to become one of the largest and most influential companies in legal tech; and that Newton has become somewhat of an industry icon, whose ClioCon keynote is always a seminal event of the conference.  A few hours after Newton delivered his keynote, Ambrogi sat down live with Newton for a wide-ranging conversation about the conference, the company, and the state of law practice and the legal profession, including findings from the just-released 2023 edition of the Clio Legal Trends Report.    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. __ __ If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

52m
Oct 16, 2023
Ep 221: Building A Subscription Law Practice, with Fidu Cofounder Kimberly Bennett

Soon after starting her own law practice, Kimberly Bennett decided there had to be a better way than the billable hour to charge for her services. She wanted predictable pricing for her intellectual property clients and predictable income for herself. That led her to subscription-based legal services, charging her clients a flat monthly fee, and it worked so well for her that she became not just an adopter of the model, but an evangelist – a frequent speaker and writer on starting and scaling a subscription-based law practice.  In 2021, Bennett took that passion for subscription services beyond law practice and into legal technology. She became cofounder, together with Blaine Korte, of Fidu https://www.fidulegal.com/, a cloud platform designed to provide lawyers with everything they need to build a scalable subscription or flat-fee based law practice. Just a few weeks ago, Fidu won the Clio Integration Award for Best Practice of Law App.  Bennett was previously on this podcast in August 2020, before she cofounded Fidu, and we talked at length then about her career, her law practice, and her adoption of the subscription model. In today’s interview, we focus on Fidu and discuss how it can help a lawyer convert an hourly practice to a subscription or flat-fee one. We also talk about Bennett’s experience going from law practice to entrepreneurship, particularly as a Black woman.    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. __ __ If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

50m
Oct 09, 2023
Ep 220: June Hsiao Liebert, President of the American Association of Law Libraries, On AI and the Future of Law Librarians

On July 27, June Hsiao Liebert took office as president of the American Association of Law Libraries, the association that represents more than 3,600 law librarians and legal information professionals throughout the world. The first Asian-American president of AALL, Liebert takes office at a time when some are saying that advances in artificial intelligence could endanger the future of the law library professional. What’s her take on the state of the profession today and its prospects for the future? That is the subject we explore on today’s show.  In her day job, Liebert is the director of information services at the law firm O’Melveny & Myers. Having worked as a chief information officer, library and information governance director, law professor, and legal technology consultant, she has an extensive background in both IT and information management. She is a 2021 Fastcase 50 award honoree, was recently named a fellow-elect of the College of Law Practice Management, and serves as the immediate past co-chair of the Indiana University Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering Alumni Board.  Note that the opinions she expresses during the podcast are hers alone and not those of O’Melveny & Myers. Also, any law-related usage of AI that she refers to in the podcast are done purely for testing purposes using private and secure systems only.  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. __ __ If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

49m
Oct 03, 2023
Ep 219: Training Lawyers to Use Generative AI, with AltaClaro Founder Abdi Shayesteh

As generative AI sweeps through the legal profession, lawyers face challenges in learning to use it responsibly and properly. This summer, one of the world’s largest law firms, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe https://www.orrick.com/, began to address that challenge by partnering with the legal skills training company AltaClaro to develop a training program for its summer associates on prompt engineering and the responsible use of generative AI. On this episode of LawNext, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by Abdi Shayesteh https://www.linkedin.com/in/abdishayesteh/, the founder and CEO of AltaClaro, a company that takes a unique experiential approach to lawyer training. They  talk about the genesis and development of that AI training program, and what it covers. Shayesteh also provides an update on the company’s growth and development since he was last on this podcast in January 2021 – a period during which the company raised a seed financing round of $2.5 million and substantially expanded its menu of course modules.  When Shaesteh, a serial entrepreneur who became a lawyer, saw how poorly prepared new associates were to practice law, he began to research education science and came up with the concept for AltaClaro. Today, its customers include law firms who use it to train associates and individual lawyers seeking to develop and enhance their skills in areas such as drafting contracts, handling M&A transactions, or closing a commercial loan deal.    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.   __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

42m
Sep 26, 2023
Ep 218: Lawmatics Founder Matt Spiegel On Automating CRM for Law Firms

Stories are increasingly common of lawyers who leave law practice to start legal technology companies, but few achieve the level of success as an entrepreneur of Matt Spiegel. He was a criminal defense lawyer in 2009 when he founded MyCase, one of the earliest cloud-based law practice management companies. In 2012, he sold MyCase to AppFolio https://www.appfolio.com/, and then left the company in 2015 to start a software company that helped organizations manage trade shows and events. In 2017, he returned to law to start his current company, Lawmatics, a client relationship management (CRM) platform for law firms.  Spiegel was previously on episode 16 of this podcast in 2018, not long after he founded Lawmatics. He developed the product because he saw a gap in the legal market for software that would help firms automate their marketing and run their businesses as sales organizations. In the years since, he has raised $12.5 million in funding, expanded the platform with time-and-billing and e-payments capabilities, and added a generative AI feature to help law firms create and edit client emails and email marketing campaigns.  In this episode of LawNext, Spiegel shares his story as a serial legal tech entrepreneur, discusses why he founded Lawmatics, describes how the platform automates legal marketing and relationship management, and talks about his future plans for the company and the platform.     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.   __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

47m
Sep 19, 2023
Ep 217: Litera CEO Sheryl Hoskins On Her First 17 Months and What’s Ahead For Her Company

It has been nearly a year and a half since Sheryl Hoskins joined Litera https://www.litera.com/ as its new CEO in April 2022. She came into that role following a period in which the company saw significant growth, fueled in part by a series of some 17 acquisitions, through which the company expanded from a primary focus on document technology into such areas as contract review, transaction management, firm intelligence, talent management, governance, and more.  Since then, she has continued to drive further growth, most recently laying out an ambitious strategy around generative AI that will bring a series of product releases and enhancements over the coming months. Today, Litera is a company with more than 2.3 million global users, nearly 1,000 global employees, and 15,000 global customers, including 99 of the Am Law 100 and 90% of the largest law firms worldwide.  Before coming to Litera, Hoskins had more than 20 years of experience in the global technology industry and an established track record managing global teams. She spent the first decade of her career at General Electric and McKesson Corp, where she held domestic and international leadership roles. Most recently, she was CEO of restaurant management platform Upserve. She also spent six years as an active-duty officer in the U.S. Army.  In her first-ever appearance on a podcast, Hoskins joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss her career, her decision to join Litera, the state of the company today, and her vision for its 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.   __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

35m
Sep 12, 2023
Ep 216: The Voices of ILTACON 2023, Part 2: Chats with 11 Legal Tech Companies

Recently in Orlando, Fla., at ILTACON, the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi recorded a series of brief live interviews with some of the legal tech companies that were in attendance. Last week on this podcast, we featured the first set of those interviews – with 12 of the legal tech startups that were participating in ILTACON’s Startup Hub.This week we are featuring interviews with some of the established legal tech companies that were attending the conference.   In these 11 short interviews, we speak with:  __ __ Be sure to also listen to last week’s interviews with the legal tech startups.    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. __ __ If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

32m
Sep 05, 2023
Ep 215: The Voices of ILTACON 2023: Brief Chats with 12 Legal Tech Startups

LawNext host Bob Ambrogi is just back from Orlando, Florida, where he attended ILTACON, the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association. Mic in hand, he recorded a series of brief interviews with some of the legal tech companies that were in attendance. Over the next two episodes of this podcast, we will share those interviews, starting today with the legal tech startups at ILTACON.  Once again this year, the conference featured a Startup Hub in the exhibit hall, where 27 startups had booths showing their products. Although Bob was not able to interview all 27, he did have the opportunity to speak briefly with a dozen of them. Today’s episode features those 12 brief interviews. We speak with: __ __ In the next episode, we’ll feature interviews with some of the established legal tech companies that were there.    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.   __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

34m
Aug 29, 2023
Ep 214: The Story Behind Gunderson Dettmer’s Launch of ChatGD, Its ‘Homegrown’ Generative AI App, with Joe Green and John Scrudato

Recently, Silicon Valley-based Gunderson Dettmer, an international law firm of more than 400 lawyers that exclusively represents clients in the innovation economy, launched ChatGD, a generative AI chat app for its lawyers and legal professionals that the firm designed and built itself. The launch appeared to make the firm the first in the U.S. to develop a proprietary internal tool using generative AI technology and possibly also the first firm anywhere to launch such a tool. On today’s episode of LawNext, the two people who spearheaded the development — Joe Green, the firm’s chief innovation officer and also of counsel, and John Scrudato, the firm’s legal engineering and data strategy manager, join host Bob Ambrogi to share the story behind ChatGD. They explain why the firm wanted to develop its own generative AI app, describe what it does and how legal professionals can use it, and share how it has been received so far by the lawyers who have used it.  As you will hear, Green and Scrudato see the development of the app as somewhat of a learning exercise — for the firm and for its lawyers — in anticipation of the enormous impact generative AI is likely to have on both legal professionals and clients. “We view this whole stage as very experimental and learning oriented,” Green says in the interview. “This is about getting the tool in the hands of lawyers in a safe way that they can really start learning about how to get value out of 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.   __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

48m
Aug 17, 2023
Ep 213: DoNotPay, Legal Regulatory Reform, and the Op-Ed the ABA Wouldn’t Publish, with Maya Markovich and Tom Gordon

Today’s episode offers a different perspective on the DoNotPay controversy – and ended up having an unexpected twist.   Earlier this year, DoNotPay, which described itself as the world’s first robot lawyer, and its founder Joshua Browder became the subject of harsh criticism after paralegal Kathryn Tewson tested several of DoNotPay’s self-help legal apps and concluded they were little more than smoke and mirrors – in some cases getting the law wrong, in others failing even to deliver the promised output.  In the wake of Tewson’s allegations, this podcast recorded an exclusive interview with Browder, in which he called the criticism “a bit of a nothingburger.” I followed that Interview with one with Tewson, in which she described in detail how she tested the DoNotPay products and responded to Browder’s dismissal of her critique.  Following those events, our guests today, Maya Markovich https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayamarkovich/, executive director and cofounder of the Justice Technology Association and executive in residence for Justice Tech at Village Capital https://vilcap.com/, and Tom Gordon, executive director of Responsive Law, an organization that represents the consumers’ voice in the legal system, co-authored an op-ed in which they argued that reforms in the regulation of the practice of law, such as those implemented in Utah, could have prevented the DoNotPay debacle, since DoNotPay would have had to have been licensed and regulated. They submitted their op-ed to the American Bar Association’s Center for Innovation, which agreed to publish it in the Center’s biannual innovation trends report, slated to be released Aug. 1. In anticipation of that publication, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi recorded the interview you’re about to hear with Markovich and Gordon, in which they discussed their op-ed and their views more broadly on regulatory reform. The interview was scheduled to post Aug. 1, in conjunction with the op-ed’s publication that day.  But then the plan hit an unexpected twist. Instead of publishing the op-ed that day, the Center notified the authors that it had canceled the publication because of what it described as “political challenges” within the ABA, but that it had neglected to inform them of that.  Because this interview was recorded before the ABA canceled the op-ed, you will hear references to the ABA’s publication of the op-ed. But since that never happened, Markovich and Gordon allowed us to publish the op-ed on LawNext. Ambrogi has also written a blog post detailing the whole sordid story.  SHOW LINKS:   __ __ 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.   __ __   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

36m
Aug 07, 2023