LawNext

There is an element of serendipity in the story of Nehal Madhani and his company Alt Legal. Even though he had been an insolvency lawyer who had never practiced trademark law, an early attempt at entrepreneurship — and at registering his own trademarks — showed him the need for better software to automate trademark applications. After creating and launching that product, he heard from his customers that their greater need was software to track the thousands of trademarks they'd already filed. Pivoting to address that need, he launched Alt Legal.

Eight years later, and without ever taking significant outside investment, Madhani has grown Alt Legal into a leading platform for trademark docketing in the U.S. and Canada. More recently, he announced a partnership with a global trademark data company that will expand Alt Legal's trademark docketing automation to every jurisdiction in the world.

On this episode of LawNext, Madhani joins host Bob Ambrogi to share his journey from insolvency lawyer to successful legal tech founder, as well as to discuss the mission of his company and his 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.

• Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote.
• Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.

A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

One of the most dynamic areas of legal tech right now is practice management, which has seen a surge of investments and acquisitions over the past year. And one of the companies that best represents that trend is Paradigm, which was founded two years ago as ASG LegalTech and rebranded this year as Paradigm, to represent its goal of bringing about a paradigm shift for legal technology.

Paradigm is a portfolio company composed of three popular practice management platforms — PracticePanther, Bill4Time and MerusCase — and its most recent acquisition in September 2020, the electronic payments platform Headnote. Since acquiring Headnote, it has integrated its e-payments technology into both PracticePanther and Bill4Time, with plans to also add it to MerusCase.

On this episode of LawNext, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by two principals of Paradigm:

• Sarah Schaaf, a former lawyer and the founder of Headnote and now general manager of Paradigm' payments division.
• Colin Li, chief financial officer and chief revenue officer at Paradigm.

We talk about the company's growth and future plans, the state of the practice management market, the increasing importance of e-payments technology, and their thoughts on future developments.

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, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote.

• Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.

A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

There is broad agreement that if law schools are to adequately train students for careers in law, then technology is a critical part of the curriculum. Despite this, many law schools get a failing grade when it comes to teaching tech. So how, exactly, should law schools teach tech? And what topics should such teaching cover?

April G. Dawson has given a lot of thought to those questions.A former computer programmer and litigator, she is now associate dean of technology and innovation and professor of law at North Carolina Central University School of Law, where her research focuses on legal pedagogy, the use of technology in legal education, and law and technology.

Recipient of the 2021 Technology, Law and Legal Education Section Award.from the Association of American Law Schools, she has written and spoken about how to design legal technology courses and who should teach them, most recently at the American Bar Association's 2021 Techshow. She also speaks on how law school faculty can use tech to better engage with students and enhance their own productivity.

In this episode of LawNext, Dawson shares her insights on why it is important for law schools to teach technology and how they should design and implement tech instruction.

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, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote.
• Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.

• Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.

A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Last August, Arizona became the first state to eliminate the ban on non-lawyer ownership of law firms. In ordering that change, as well as a package of additional reforms, the Arizona Supreme Court acted on the recommendations of a task force that had called for fundamental changes in the regulation of legal services, all with the goal of enhancing access to justice,

On today's episode of LawNext, we are joined by Arizona Supreme Court Vice Chief Justice Ann A. Scott Timmer, who was not only among the justices who approved the changes, but who chaired the task force that recommended them. Justice Timmer discusses why the task force recommended such sweeping changes, why the court adopted them, the status of their implementation, and the implications for access to justice.

Justice Timmer was appointed to the Arizona Supreme Court in 2012. Previously, she served on the Arizona Court of Appeals from 2000 to 2012, serving three years as its chief judge, and where she chaired the court's Legal Services Task Force. She is chair of the Supreme Court's Attorney Regulation Advisory Committee, a member of the National Conference of Bar Examiners board of trustees and has been elected as a member of The American Law Institute.

Among her many honors, Justice Timmer was named 2020 Woman of the Year by the Arizona Capitol Times and she was recognized as one of the Most Influential Business Women in Arizona in 2020.

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, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote.
• Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.

• Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.

A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

LexLab, the legal innovation hub at UC Hastings Law School, recently wrapped up the fourth cohort of its legal tech accelerator program with a demo day at which the seven startup participants got to pitch their products to potential investors.

But this demo day, in fact this entire cohort, was noticeably different than prior ones, in that it was the first to take place 100% virtually, without the benefit of having the startups come and work on site in LexLab's offices on the Hastings campus in San Francisco.

In this episode of LawNext, we speak with LexLab's director, Drew Amerson, and Tiyani Majoko, cofounder of Anü, one of the startups that participated in the program, about the accelerator program and about the good and bad of the experience of conducting it virtually.

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, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote.
• Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.

• Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.

A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

A new $110 million Series E financing round for legal technology company Clio puts its valuation at $1.6 billion, making it the first law practice management company to achieve unicorn status and one of just a few legal tech companies to pass that milestone.

In an exclusive LawNext interview, Jack Newton, Clio's cofounder and CEO, joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss this news and what it means for the company and its customers, as well as to share his thoughts on what this means in the broader context of the rapidly growing legal technology market.

Possibly the hottest market in legal tech today is contract lifecycle management, and one of the most talked-about companies in that market is Ironclad, a six-year-old startup that recently raised a $100 million Series D – at a reported valuation of $1 billion – and that just made its first acquisition, of the clickwrap transaction platform PactSafe.

What makes Ironclad different than other CLM companies, says cofounder and CEO Jason Boehmig, is that it is not just building incrementally better workflows, but is creating a new standard of digital contracting that will drive the businesses of the future.

Boehmig is today's guest on LawNext. In 2014, he left his job as a corporate at law firm Fenwick & West to co-found Ironclad with CTO Cai GoGwilt after realizing that contracting was still mired in the analog age. He built Ironclad one log at a time, he tells host Bob Ambrogi, and is now looking ahead to eventually taking the company public.

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, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote.
• Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.

• Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.

A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Throughout Europe and Eastern Europe, Holger Zscheyge is widely regarded as a leading authority on legal technology and innovation. President of the European Legal Technology Association, he is also founder and managing director of Infotropic Media, a Moscow-based legal publisher and producer of legal technology conferences, and a cofounder of Moscow Legal Hackers.

Zscheyge was a guest on LawNext in 2018, when host Bob Ambrogi interviewed him live in Moscow at the Skolkovo LegalTech conference about the state of legal tech adoption in Russia. A lot has changed since then, so Zscheyge, who took office as ELTA president last November, returns to LawNext to share his perspectives on legal tech and innovation in Europe and Eastern Europe as they stand today.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Zscheyge and Ambrogi discuss legal tech use by law departments and law firms, the pandemic's impact on legal tech adoption, regulatory-reform initiatives that parallel those in the U.S., and the need for law schools to better teach legal tech and innovation.

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, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote.
• Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.

• Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.

A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

It was recently announced that Andrew Ballheimer, who retired last October as global managing partner at Magic Circle law firm Allen & Overy, one of the largest law firms in the world, has joined the board of directors of the managed services company Factor, which spun off in 2019 from the alternative legal services provider Axiom.

Some are saying the move represents a bridge between traditional law firms and new forms of legal services delivery, and that it signals a future in which law firms and ALSPs more commonly work together to better serve their clients.

Andrew Ballheimer joins us on today's LawNext to discuss this news, together with Chris DeConti, head of strategy at Factor and formerly executive vice president at Axiom. They discuss the significance of Ballheimer's move and how they believe partnerships between law firms and ALSPs can benefit clients. They also share their thoughts on innovation in the legal industry, and on what the future holds for firms such as Allen & Overy and companies such as Factor.

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, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote.
• Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.

• Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.

A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Jeffrey Marple, who has gained a national reputation for law department innovation in his role as director of innovation for corporate legal at Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, has moved to Keesal Propulsion Labs, a company that assists Fortune 500 law departments in automating their business and legal processes, where has taken the position of director of digital transformation strategy.

In an exclusive LawNext interview, Marple and Rudy DeFelice, cofounder and CEO of KP Labs, join host Bob Ambrogi to discuss Marple's move to the company, which spun off in 2018 from the California law firm Keesal, Young & Logan. They also share their insights on the state of law department innovation, the challenges law departments face in innovating, and where the industry is heading.

For Marple, his move to KP Labs comes after 21 years at Liberty Mutual, where, in his most recent role, he led the investigation, testing, and implementation of new technology, processes, and business models to improve how legal professionals work. In 2019, the Association of Corporate Counsel named Marple's department the "Legal Operations Team of the Year."

DeFelice, the company's cofounder and CEO, is a lawyer and technology entrepreneur. After practicing law early in his career with the firms McDermott, Will & Emery and Kelley Drye & Warren, he went on to found three technology companies, including one venture-backed legal technology company, Realpractice, which was acquired in 2012.

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, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote.
• Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.

• Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.

A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.