As the technical co-founder of Version Story, Jordan Bryan draws from his experience as a developer seeing how technology solved a major industry pain point: collaborating on coding projects (the solution there was GitHub). He and his co-founder found an analog to a pain point that every lawyer knows well: version control over documents and contracts. This was the genesis for the idea to develop the "git" for lawyers. 

Jordan's journey provides some great lessons for both founders and lawyers. 

Lesson for founders? Good solutions come from the marriage of technical prowess and deep domain expertise.

Lesson for lawyers? Start using AI in your practice, as often as your workflow suits. It's not just about keeping up, it's about leveling up. Embrace the superpower potential of AI. 

It was a fascinating conversation about AI's impact on coding, product development, and legal practice.

**views express my own**

Jordan Bryan | LinkedIn

Version Story: Legal Redlining and Version Control

The good news for law firms? Most already have the building blocks needed to innovate on their operating model for the AI era. Rok Popov Ledinski explains why. Rok is a developer turned strategic thinker and tech implementor for law firms. So I put on my BigLaw hat and ask him to walk me through the steps of planning, deploying, and driving adoption of technology in a business of law. 

Quick bottom-line? Taking incremental steps towards incremental gains by leveraging existing capabilities and empowering experimentation anchored in the law firm's strategic positioning.

For those with a slightly longer attention span, check out the episode!

Rok Popov Ledinski | LinkedIn

https://www.mpladvisors.com/ 

I confess I didn't fully "get it" about Claude Code-Cowork-Skills-Plugins until legal engineer Antoine Louis explained it on this episode. It is a must-listen for anyone who wants to understand why it all means that we are crossing the Rubicon in AI for lawyers.

An engineer by trade and a researcher by training, Antoine provides just the right level of detail needed to understand why the last few months have seen a transformational shift in the use of AI in legal (and other verticals). As a start-up founder, he also understands what it means for lawyers, technologists, and anyone working in the business of law. 

The interview is, IMHO, the clearest explanation I've heard of where we are and where we are headed when it comes to using AI to develop tailored tools that support lawyers in their day-to-day practice. Developments in the tech have already taken our industry into uncharted waters. We are at the start of an era during which AI will be used to quickly develop and deploy customizable, personalized legal solutions that address the specific needs of lawyers in their day-to-day practice.

Antoine Louis | LinkedIn

Lawvable Skills | AI Agent Skills for Legal Experts | Lawvable

Joined by Kevin Keller. Kevin has done it all -- from product counsel to General Counsel, developer to inventor, from advisor to investor. And he's done it through the formative years of the internet era. The secret to his success? I doubt it can be summed up in one sentence, but one thing that stood out to me is how Kevin has continually invested in himself by developing the skills that position him to take advantage of opportunities as they arise. In today's era of rapid tech transformation, I think both aspiring and practicing lawyers can learn something valuable from Kevin's journey.

Kevin Keller | LinkedIn

I talk to Matt Pollins, a former BigLaw partner turned LegalTech founder. Matt spent many years practicing tech law before transitioning to building LegalTech products. Matt and I talk lawyer-to-lawyer about the practical implications of agentic AI on the practice and business of law. We also explore what it means in the market for legal software when lawyers, law firms, and corporate legal departments start to build more of their solutions internally.

What does innovation at a law firm look like? How do you match client/lawyer needs to the internal resources that can address them? I explore this with Benjamin Llinas, Matter Optimization Manager at Linklaters, a global law firm.

Ben is that unicorn in the law firm org structure sitting at the intersection of supporting lawyers, servicing clients, and deploying technology. His work is part art, part science. Part technologist, part psychologist. 

His work requires not only technical acumen, creative thinking and problem solving, but also the emotional intelligence to connect with lawyers to ensure they are using and benefitting from the tech being deployed.

Ben and I talk about how AI is impacting the business of law firms, the day-to-day work of its lawyers, and the demands of its clients. But Ben reminds me that AI is just one out of the many ways that technology can streamline legal practice. If you know how to look for it, you will find a lot in the existing arsenal for streamlining legal operations at a law firm. 

The bigger challenge, in some ways, is identifying the specific needs of a lawyer/project/client.  And so much of our conversation is about the process of un-packing a workflow and finding the right bits and pieces that can be automated -- whether it's using the latest snazzy AI-powered solution or an Excel macro. 

Because what you don't want to do is jump to a conclusion and buy an expensive end-to-end, out-of-the-box solution that does too much and too little all at once. You will have served your internal client better by putting in the effort up-front to parse the workflow, break it down into its distinct parts, and come up with the right plug-and-play mix mix of buy/build solutions that achieve the best outcome overall. 

I talk with Gwendolyn Lindsay Cooley, founder of Taimet, about productized AI solutions for lawyers, by lawyers. Her product seeks to solve a specific problem set that comes up in the day-to-day practice of every antitrust deal lawyer: screening M&A transactions for regulatory risk. We talk about how she came up with her solution, how it works, and what it means for lawyers and the clients they support. Along the way, we also explore the way that AI products are impacting not only the practice but also the business of law in an evolving business climate in which clients expect more, for less, and quicker. We also talk about the unique strengths that practicing lawyers have in  identifying user needs and developing legaltech solutions to address them. 

https://www.taimet.com/

I talk with Daniel Schwarz, co-founder of CompetitionAI, about bespoke AI tools for subject matter experts. We discuss what it means to build AI tools tailored to the specific needs of lawyers practicing in a specific area of law. We also explore what AI means for law firms, the lawyers working in them, and the law students aspiring to enter the profession.

The AI Legal revolution is already here. 

That’s the bottom line from my conversation with LegalTech thought leader, educator, and founder, Thomas G. Martin. 

It’s no longer just about using tools to be more productive. What we’re looking at is a transformation of what a “legal service provider” is. Tom’s theory is that every law firm is now a software company. Whether or not you agree with the ultimate conclusion, you’ll be hard pressed to find flaws in the logic that leads him to it. 

The implications of this are far reaching. Practicing lawyers, law students, startup founders — if guided by the ultimate needs of the client — will witness major shifts in the model for delivering those services. 

This is not a matter of a decade. It is just around the corner — with the foundation already shifting underneath everyone’s feet. 

But this is not cause for panic or alarm. We haven’t passed some event horizon for law firm tech adoption. It’s a moment for reflection, investment, and for embracing the opportunities that this pivotal moment presents. 

As always, views expressed are my own.

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/thomasgmartin

https://www.lawdroidmanifesto.com/

https://lawdroid.com/

Alex Baker, founder of Legal Tech Collective, comes on to talk about how practicing lawyers can leverage their know-how and experience to develop and productize LegalTech solutions. Whether its internal solutions to streamline your practice or client-facing tools that improve how you offer legal services, lawyers who think like LegalTech founders can position themselves and their practices to out-compete technology laggards. We talk about how lawyers can go from idea to product, what challenges they face along the way, and how to position such products so that the law firms underwriting their development can rightly see them as an investment with potential ROI (margin and market share) as opposed to a partner's costly pet project.