LawNext

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:

• Whitney Triplet, who is in her final semester at Southern University Law Center.

• Paul Campbell, a part-time student in his fourth year at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law.

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:

• On LawNext Podcast: Two Law Students Who Took On Systemic Racism in the Legal System.

• On LawNext Podcast: The Legal Fellows Tackling Systemic Racism in Law.

Thank You To Our Sponsors

This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.

• Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

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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.

• Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

• TrialPad, an easy-to-use app to organize, annotate, and present evidence

• CARET serves over 10,000 firms with practice management and document automation technology to enable savvy professionals to refocus their expertise on what truly matters.

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

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.

• Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

• DocReviewPad, the easy-to-use app to review, organize issue code, and produce documents

• CARET serves over 10,000 firms with practice management and document automation technology to enable savvy professionals to refocus their expertise on what truly matters.

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

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.

• Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

• TranscriptPad, an easy-to-use app to review, search, and annotate transcripts

• Caret, the award winning practice management platform work or document and workflow automation.

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

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.

• Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

• Trial Pad: Organize, annotate, highlight, and callout documents; then dynamically present at trial or mediation

• Caret, the award winning practice management platform work or document and workflow automation.

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

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.

• Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

• Universal Migrator, the easiest way to move your firm's data and documents from one app to another.

• DocReviewPad: Review, organize, issue code, and bates stamp documents; then create production sets with detailed reports

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

In his keynote address at the recently concluded 2023 Clio Cloud Conference, Jack Newton, the founder and CEO of Clio, 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.

• Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

• Universal Migrator, the easiest way to move your firm's data and documents from one app to another.

• TranscriptPad is an easy-to-use app to review, search, and annotate transcripts.

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

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, 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.

• Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

• Universal Migrator, the easiest way to move your firm's data and documents from one app to another.

• Trial Pad, an easy-to-use app to organize, annotate, and present evidence

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

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.

• Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

• Universal Migrator, the easiest way to move your firm's data and documents from one app to another.

• Trial Pad, an easy-to-use app to organize, annotate, and present evidence

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

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, 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, 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.

• Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks.

• Universal Migrator, the easiest way to move your firm's data and documents from one app to another.

• Trial Pad, an easy-to-use app to organize, annotate, and present evidence

If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.