Pioneers and Pathfinders

Today, on Pioneers and Pathfinders, we're joined by Michael Afar, a labor and employment partner in Seyfarth's Los Angeles office, a 40 Under 40 honoree, and one of the minds behind SEYscraper, the winning idea from the firm's inaugural SEYence Fair. As this year's SEYence Fair drew over a 58% increase in participation over last year, Michael joins us to reflect on his own experience with the comp...

Today we're joined by Juan Carlos Varela, office managing partner of Seyfarth's Miami office and chair of the firm's Latin America practice. Throughout his career, Juan Carlos has advised clients on complex cross-border matters throughout the Americas and built a reputation as a leading international business lawyer. With Miami rapidly emerging as one of the world's most important hubs for interna...

Today we're joined by David Cowen, founder of the Cowen Group and SOLID. David brings together innovators across legal, technology, and business to help shape conversations around leadership, talent, and the future of the profession. In this episode, we'll explore the skills that matter most in an AI-driven world, how legal professionals can think strategically about their AI dividend, and David's...

We're very excited to welcome Katya Linossi, co-founder of AtlasFuse by ClearPeople, and a recognized leader in knowledge management and legal innovation. From helping law firms tackle information overload to building AI-ready knowledge infrastructure, Katya has spent years exploring how organizations can turn fragmented information into trusted, actionable intelligence. In today's conversation, w...

Today we're joined by Jennifer Leonard, founder of Creative Lawyers. Jennifer works with law firms, legal departments, and law schools to help legal professionals navigate innovation, change, and the rapid evolution of AI. We'll discuss the future of legal education, the skills lawyers will need in an AI-enabled profession, the importance of design thinking and human-centered problem solving, and...

Today, we're joined by Greg Dickason, executive vice president and chief technology officer for global legal business at LexisNexis. Greg has led technology and transformation initiatives across industries and around the world, so he brings a unique perspective on how organizations adopt innovation and navigate periods of rapid change.  We'll explore the evolution of legal technology, what comes n...

Today we're joined by someone who has spent decades at the intersection of law, technology, innovation, and leadership. Ari Kaplan is a former practicing attorney, a widely recognized legal industry analyst, researcher, author, and speaker who has dedicated his career to helping the legal profession understand and navigate change. Over the past two decades, he has conducted extensive research, adv...

One of the things we talk a lot about on this podcast is what it takes to drive innovation in industries that are not always quick to change, and today's guest is someone who's been working on that challenge from the inside out. Today we are joined by Josh Levy, co-founder and CEO of Document Crunch, an AI platform focused on making contracts more usable for the people who rely on them every day....

Today we're joined by Greg Mostyn, CEO and co-founder of Wexler. Wexler is a fact intelligence platform built for litigation teams. Wexler extracts events, timelines, and contradictions from large evidence sets and links everything back to its source, helping litigators build a clear factual picture from what could be hundreds of thousands of documents. In this episode, we get into what it really...

Today's guest is Professor Charlotte Alexander, a leading scholar whose work has focused on the efficiency, transparency, and openness of the court system, particularly in civil litigation. Charlotte is a Harvard Law-trained scholar whose research has been published in some of the most prestigious journals in the world, including Science, the NYU Law Review, and the Texas Law Review. Today, Charlo...

Today's guest, Dr. Larry Richard, practiced as a trial attorney for 10 years before earning a PhD in organizational psychology. Today, he is a leading expert on why lawyers behave the way they do. For over 30 years, Dr. Richard has been researching how lawyers behave and why. He founded LawyerBrain LLC, which advises the leaders of major law firms on the human side of running a practice—things lik...

Today, we meet our new co-hosts, Kevin Young and Zeynep Ersin. Kevin is a Seyfarth partner and employment litigator who puts new tools and ideas to work in client service, and Zeynep is Seyfarth’s Chief Innovation & Strategic Design Officer, focused on embedding a culture of innovation across the firm. As we launch the next chapter of the podcast, Zeynep and Kevin sit down with the person who buil...

This episode brings Steve Poor's role as host of Pioneers and Pathfinders to a close. It has been a wonderful five-year ride with fascinating guests sharing intriguing insights on the past and future of the profession. We've learned an enormous amount from each of them, and we appreciate their contribution to what are important dialogues about the future of the profession. To everyone who has list...

Today we recognize two milestones for this podcast, and thus, we have a special two-part discussion. With this episode, we celebrate five years of over 200 individual guests drawn from all corners of the legal profession. Each guest has been incredibly generous with their time and ideas, and we have learned an enormous amount from them. It has been a wonderful experience. Additionally, these episo...

As we close out our fifth year, we welcome back one of our early guests, Michele DeStefano, for a fascinating return conversation. Michele is a professor at the University of Miami School of Law, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, and the founder of LawWithoutWalls. Her work sits at the intersection of leadership, collaboration, and innovation in professional services. In this episode, we...

Today we’re joined by Joanna Goodman, a freelance journalist, writer, and author covering technology, business, and media for national publications and major corporate clients. Joanna focuses much of her work on how emerging technologies, especially AI, are reshaping the legal profession. She writes the IT column for The Law Society Gazette and contributes regularly to the Legal Geek newsletter. S...

This week, we’re joined by Dr. Eva Bruch. Based in Spain, Dr. Bruch is a lawyer, strategic consultant, and partner at LOIS—a consultancy focused on legal operations and the digital transformation of corporate legal departments and law firms. For more than two decades, Dr. Buch has been working at the intersection of strategy, technology, and the legal profession. At LOIS, she helps organizations a...

Today we're delighted to welcome back Marlene Gebauer—self-described “Legal Innovation Heroine,” co-host of The Geek In Review, and one of the most thoughtful voices in the legal innovation community. Since she last joined us in 2022, Marlene has stepped into a new role. She is now a practice support attorney at K&L Gates, while continuing to lead SparkMind Advisors as CEO. It's a combination that...

This week on Pioneers and Pathfinders, we’re pleased to welcome back Basha Rubin, CEO and co-founder of Priori. It's been about four years since Basha last joined us, and in that time, Priori has gone through a remarkable transformation. What began as a marketplace connecting clients with flexible legal talent and boutique firms has evolved into a robust platform with innovative RFP and panel mana...

Today we’re joined by Sateesh Nori. Sateesh is the chief legal futurist at LawDroid and a senior research fellow at NYU School of Law. His work sits at the crossroads of justice, technology, and public service. Before moving into legal innovation, he spent years serving New Yorkers as a housing rights attorney and later as a managing attorney at both The Legal Aid Society and Legal Services of New...

This week, we’re shining a spotlight on meaningful innovation in the access to justice space by revisiting our conversation with Kristen Sonday, co-founder and CEO of Paladin. Kristen and her team are transforming the way pro bono work happens—making it easier for law firms, legal departments, and nonprofits to connect lawyers with opportunities while cutting down on the administrative friction th...

Today we're pleased to welcome back Dan Linna, director of law and technology initiatives and senior lecturer at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and the McCormick School of Engineering. Dan was one of our very first guests back in 2021, and it was a real pleasure to reconnect and continue the conversation. Dan's teaching and research focus on innovation and technology in law, including computa...

On today's episode of Pioneers and Pathfinders, we're delighted to welcome Carrie Fletcher, a leadership development expert, lawyer, and longtime force for change in the legal profession. With more than 30 years of experience, Carrie’s work spans leadership workshops, executive coaching, consultancy, and thought leadership. As the global head of faculty at O Shaped, she works with law firms and le...

This week on Pioneers and Pathfinders, we're joined by Taylor Bell, founding partner of Arizona ABS Law PLLC. Taylor works at the forefront of one of the most closely watched experiments in legal innovation, Arizona's alternative business structure (ABS) framework. As a fractional general counsel and employment law attorney, Taylor advises law firms, legal tech companies, and investors on every st...

Today we’re catching up with Daniel Lewis, CEO of LegalOn Technologies. LegalOn is transforming the way legal professionals review and negotiate contracts through advanced contract AI, helping thousands of lawyers work faster and with greater accuracy. Since Daniel last joined us, LegalOn has had some major accomplishments: its first acquisition, the close of Series E funding, the launch of its ma...