LawNext

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. 

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. 

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). 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.