Today's guest is Haley Altman. She is a corporate attorney, founder, and a friend to many of us in the legal technology innovation space. Haley has had a fascinating career, where she moved from attorney for buyers and sellers, to founding and selling her own company, and eventually landing on the buy side with Litera. She began her career in Big Law, first as an associate and then partner, moving into entrepreneurship as the founder of Doxly, Inc., which was acquired by Litera. There she took o...
Nov 30, 2022•36 min
Today’s guest is Carmin Ballou, vice president of Data Analytics and Innovation at Attorneys' Liability Assurance Society, also known as ALAS. ALAS is the country’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 223 law firms—including 89 of the Am Law 200—with more than 74,000 lawyers located around the world. A lawyer with a Master of Science in Analytics degree from the University of Chicago Graham School, Carmin is focused on a key element of the legal profession: risk management. She uses her legal ...
Nov 16, 2022•30 min
Today we welcome back our premiere guest, Dr. Heidi K. Gardner. An economist by training, she is a distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession and chair of the school’s Smarter Collaboration Master Class and Sector Leadership Master Class. In addition to these roles, she founded and runs her own consultancy, Gardner & Co. In our first conversation, we talked about her journey, how she got involved in studying the legal profession, and her bestselling book, Sma...
Nov 09, 2022•34 min
Today’s guest is Alex Smith, Global Product Management Lead for iManage RAVN. He got his start at legal publishing giant LexisNexis, where he began in online editorial work and eventually evolved his role to product management and platform innovation. An interest in new roles in law firms led to his time as innovation manager at Reed Smith, a global firm where he oversaw the firm’s Innovation Hub program that encouraged, communicated, connected, and managed a pipeline of ideas across the firm's ...
Nov 02, 2022•34 min
Contracts are a hot topic in education, technology innovation, and practice in the legal industry. In fact, we've had several guests on the show focused on those aspects of contract management, but today's guest focuses on contract formation. She asks a simple, but important question: Can we learn to do a better job of negotiating and drafting better contracts? Laura Frederick is the founder and CEO of How to Contract. Drawn from her 26 years practicing contract law, How To Contract teaches real...
Oct 26, 2022•32 min
Mishcon de Reya is one of the most unique and fascinating law firms in the world. Today’s guest, Elliot Moss, is the mind behind Mishcon’s brand. Elliot is chief brand officer and a partner at Mishcon, a 600 fee-earner firm headquartered in London. This unique combination of roles is made possible by the Legal Services Act 2007 in the UK. Elliot has overall responsibility for brand, marketing, communications, client development, new business, and social impact for the firm. He comes from the wor...
Oct 19, 2022•43 min
It's always a delight to talk to people who are passionate about what they do. Dr. Silvia Hodges Silverstein is such a person. She researches, teaches, and speaks on purchasing decisions and change in the legal industry. Silvia is the CEO of Buying Legal Council, which supports professionals tasked with sourcing legal services and legal tech through education, research, and advocacy. Their mission is to advance the field of buying legal services and legal tech by sharing intelligence and best pr...
Oct 12, 2022•34 min
Jennifer Leonard is the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School's chief innovation officer and the executive director of the Future of the Profession Initiative. As chief innovation officer, Jennifer advances projects that evolve our understanding of the skills and knowledge lawyers need to thrive in a rapidly changing professional landscape. She and her colleagues also develop multidisciplinary projects that engage law students with creative thinkers from the Wharton School, Penn Engineerin...
Oct 05, 2022•36 min
Zach Posner is a three-time entrepreneur turned investor. He is working to find ways that artificial intelligence can be used to positively affect the world. To that end, Zach is the co-founder and managing partner at The LegalTech Fund, which is the first venture capital fund to focus exclusively on legal tech. Founded in 2020 post-pandemic, the Fund recently closed to $28.5 million, exceeding its goal of $25 million. The vision of The LegalTech Fund is to bring together a community of the worl...
Sep 28, 2022•29 min
The past few years have seen a rise in heads of innovation at Big Law firms. One of the leading voices in this space is David Wang, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati’s chief innovation officer. David is responsible for overseeing the firm's innovation strategy, the development and implementation of legal technology programs, and supporting and advising both internal and client teams on the legal and operational implications of emerging technologies and business models. He previously practiced...
Sep 21, 2022•29 min
JusticeText, an MIT- and Google-backed startup, is building technology to improve criminal justice outcomes for low-income Americans. Today's guest is Devshi Mehrotra, JusticeText CEO and co-founder. She started this work when she was a computer science undergraduate at the University of Chicago, while the city was reeling from the death of Laquan McDonald. Devshi and co-founder Leslie Jones-Dove began their work helping public defenders better utilize large volumes of admissible video and audio...
Sep 14, 2022•28 min
Tony Thai is an attorney, entrepreneur, and software engineer. He founded and serves as CEO and chief engineer of HyperDraft, a company which builds bespoke document automation software for law firms and legal departments. Prior to his legal career, Tony worked as an enterprise software engineer. An M&A venture capital attorney by training, his goal was always to build tech to disrupt the profession. To learn how lawyers practice and how the law is delivered, Tony practiced at some of the wo...
Aug 31, 2022•33 min
We've had a number of guests on the show focused on the A2J gap, as well as issues of social justice, but today's guest, Jazz Hampton, combines both. Jazz is CEO and general counsel at TurnSignl, a Minnesota-based tech company that he co-founded in the wake of the deaths of Philando Castile and George Floyd. TurnSignl is a mobile app where the user, if stopped for a traffic violation or involved in an accident, can push a button and be connected automatically to an attorney to receive real-time,...
Aug 24, 2022•33 min
We're joined today by Olga V. Mack. Olga is vice president and CEO of Parley Pro at LexisNexis. Parley Pro is a contract life cycle management platform that is pioneering online negotiation technology. Olga has dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She believes that by embracing technology, the legal profession will become stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive. Olga's TED talks are very popular, and she is an outspoken advocate for professional women. She founde...
Aug 17, 2022•31 min
Casey Flaherty is well known in the world of legal innovation. His career journey has taken him to nearly every corner of the legal system. Casey has been a Big Law litigator, in-house counsel at a Global 500 company, a legal operations consultant, and architect of the legal project management team with the world's largest law firm. Today he is co-founder and chief strategy officer at LexFusion, a collaborative circle of handpicked, truly excellent legal innovation companies. In Casey's role, he...
Aug 10, 2022•25 min
Marlene Gebauer is a self-described “knowledge heroine.” After a successful stint as a practicing lawyer, Marlene became a law librarian, where she then transitioned into legal information management. She focuses on research, outreach and education, procurement, licensing, and management. Today she is the director of knowledge management at Locke Lord, where she drives adoption of innovative legal service technologies. In her spare time, she is co-host of the award-winning The Geek In Review pod...
Aug 03, 2022•33 min
Over the past decade or so, the legal industry has expanded dramatically to include different kinds of providers, and no part of the industry has contributed to that growth more than the managed services sector. Today we're joined by Ed Sohn, a veteran of that segment of the industry. As with so many of our guests, Ed started out in Big Law—in this case, as an attorney with King & Spalding. A desire to see India led Ed to spend seven years as an executive with Pangea3, the company that pione...
Jul 27, 2022•35 min
For those conversant with the world of legal tech, today's guest needs no introduction…but we’ll do it anyway. Noah Waisberg is a serial legal tech entrepreneur who is changing the way lawyers practice law. Most recently, he co-founded and became CEO of software company Zuva, which uses AI to extract the value out of documents and contracts within client businesses. Zuva, in turn, is a spinoff of Kira, which Noah co-founded and led as CEO from its start, through to its exit to Litera. Kira conti...
Jul 20, 2022•44 min
Today’s guest is Nicole Black, legal technology evangelist at MyCase. Nicole describes her role as a bridge between technology and the practice of law. On the MyCase side of the bridge, she represents the lawyer point of view, and shares insights and industry knowledge with MyCase’s tech and marketing teams. (We should note that following our recording of this episode, MyCase announced its acquisition by AffiniPay; we did not discuss that because of the timing.) On the attorney side of the bridg...
Jul 13, 2022•29 min
Today’s guest is Nikki Shaver, a high-achieving legal technology executive specializing in legal business transformation and enterprisewide change management. Her experience in the legal industry includes 10 years of legal practice with top-tier law firms and Fortune 500 companies and close to a decade of experience as a global innovation leader in large law firms. Most recently, she left her role as lead of innovation and KM lead at Paul Hastings to devote herself full-time to Legal Technology ...
Jul 06, 2022•35 min
Anyone following the business of Big Law will be familiar with today’s guest. Over the past few years, Roy Strom has been one of the key reporters covering the country's biggest law firms and how money flows through the legal system. His weekly column, “Big Law Business,” examines the economics, cultures, and personalities inside law firms and an increasingly competitive industry. For the past five years, he has focused on change in Big Law, devoting his 100th column to the accelerating pace of ...
Jun 29, 2022•31 min
Today’s guest is Ivy Grey, a legal tech entrepreneur, well-regarded writer, and former practicing lawyer. Her work on technology competence, ethics, and innovation has made her a respected thought leader in legal tech. Ivy has been recognized as a Fastcase 50 Honoree and was recently named to Women of Legal Tech by the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center. Currently, Ivy is Vice President of Strategy and Business Development for WordRake, an editing software for professionals. Ivy writes and spe...
Jun 22, 2022•36 min
In today's episode, we're joined by Pieter van der Hoeven. Pieter is the co-founder and CEO of Clocktimizer, which was one of the first legal tech products that applied machine learning techniques in an effort to pull actionable data from individual lawyer time records. An M&A lawyer by training, Pieter co-founded Clocktimizer out of frustration with a manual process of reviewing time records to report to clients and a belief that there had to be a better way. Over the years, Clocktimizer gr...
Jun 15, 2022•30 min
David Johnson is a lawyer, teacher, and writer. His fascinating career path has taken him from Miami courtrooms in the '80s to general counsel roles for Silicon Valley tech startups in the '90s, and now teaching and research posts at Stanford Law School and the Stanford Institute of Design—known as the “d.school.” His work in design began as GC and COO for a consultancy that was applying design thinking for business advice. This eventually led to his d.school class, Negotiation by Design. Today,...
Jun 08, 2022•35 min
Today we welcome Jessica Stuart, Senior Product Manager at Pro Bono Net. In her role, she combines her passion for access to justice with her interests in technology, process improvement, and the user experience to increase the effectiveness and reach of law firm pro bono programs via the practice management software Pro Bono Manager. Jessica has also helped lead the platform development and product strategy for Pro Bono Net’s Remote Legal Connect platform, which allows legal services providers,...
Jun 01, 2022•31 min
For anyone following the rapidly evolving area of legal technology, today's guest will be a familiar voice. Bob Ambrogi—lawyer, journalist, media consultant, and blogger—has been working at the intersection of law, media, and technology for 40 years. He is known internationally for his expertise in legal technology, legal practice, and legal ethics. He's won numerous awards for his blog and his leading role on the cutting edge of change in the industry, including being named to Fastcase 50 and L...
May 25, 2022•30 min
Today we are joined by Ed Walters, a true pioneer in legal tech and driver of change in the legal industry. Ed is the CEO and co-founder of Fastcase, which has grown into one of the world’s largest cloud-based legal software providers for the legal industry. It currently serves more than 800,000 subscribers from around the world. Before founding Fastcase, Ed spent time in Big Law serving a number of large companies, and worked as a speechwriter in the White House. Ed is active in the A2J space, ...
May 18, 2022•37 min
If you have spent any time in the “legal tech” hashtag on social media, you’ve probably encountered today’s guest. And you probably already know that Colin S. Levy is not your typical lawyer. Shaped by his experience graduating law school during the tail end of the Great Recession, he has taken many twists and turns, from eschewing Big Law to finding an in-house job—and most recently, taking on the role of legal tech evangelist at a contract life cycle management startup. Through it all, one of ...
May 11, 2022•30 min
In recognition of Well-Being Week in Law, we are bringing you our interview with Jeena Cho, a pioneer in the area of mental health and wellness for lawyers. Long before the nonstop stressors of the last two years, Jeena Cho was a vocal advocate for the well-being of lawyers. It started when she realized how meditation and mindfulness could help her deal with the stress of practicing bankruptcy law. Since that time, her message about the urgency of wellness for lawyers has resonated throughout th...
May 04, 2022•32 min
Today’s guest is Michael Rynowecer, president and founder of The BTI Consulting Group. For more than 30 years, Michael has helped service organizations enhance their performance by looking at every angle of the client relationship through the lens of the client experience. He has conducted and analyzed more than 20,000 one-on-one interviews with C-level executives to discover their expectations, needs, priorities, preferences, and opinions about outside counsel. This research has established BTI...
Apr 27, 2022•33 min
