LawNext

David Lat defied the popular conception of who should be hit with a serious case of COVID-19. Just 44 years old, a two-time marathoner, with a young family and a successful career as a legal recruiter and journalist, and best known as the founder of the blog Above the Law , he did not fit the mold of a person at high risk.  But what started early in March as fever and chills eventually led to 17 d...

In Australia, as elsewhere, COVID-19 is creating a surge in the demand for legal help, especially among low-income individuals, as people face job losses, evictions, bankruptcy, domestic violence, and end-of-life issues. Further complicating the situation there is that parts of the country are still recovering from the bush fires that only recently were extinguished. With face-to-face legal help n...

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic scrambled any sense of business as usual last week, the document-automation company Litera seemed to stay a step ahead, becoming one of the first major legal technology companies to take steps to continue operations , quickly pivoting to develop a lite version of its deal-management platform to offer for free , and completing the notable acquisition of Best Authority...

On Monday, March 23, the practice management company Clio announced that it was committing $1 million to a disaster relief fund to help the legal community successfully navigate the challenges and hurdles brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. "We want to ensure lawyers are set up to succeed as well as ensuring their their clients can continue to get the legal help they need," Jack Newton , the comp...

On Thursday, March 12, facing the escalating threat of the coronavirus pandemic, Brigham Young University Law School made the decision to close down live classes, send students home, and teach the remainder of the semester online.  As it happened, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi was at the law school that day, where he was scheduled to interview the school's head of infrastructure and technology, David A...

At ABA TECHSHOW 2020, Vicki Huff Eckert , U.S. and global new ventures and innovation leader at PwC , was the featured speaker at the Rebels Riot Luncheon, an event honoring the Legal Technology Resource Center's 2020 Women of Legal Tech and the ABA Journal's Legal Rebels.  Shortly after the luncheon, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi sat down with Eckert for a live conversation to discuss innovation in pr...

When Jerry Levine became general counsel of IPsoft in December 2015, the artificial intelligence company had been in business since 1998, but it had never had an inhouse lawyer. That meant Levine had the daunting task of creating a legal department from scratch, within an established company that had customers worldwide.  More than four years later, Levine has built an international team of inhous...

The growing use of legal analytics is rapidly transforming the practice of law. Within law firms, analytics drive litigation strategy, business development efforts, and hiring decisions. Within corporate legal departments, analytics drive outside counsel hiring and internal business operations.  In a special episode of LawNext recorded live during Legalweek 2020 in New York City, we bring together...

As corporate legal departments seek to control costs and drive innovation, how can better use of data, metrics and analytics help? How are corporate counsel using analytics to measure and improve performance internally and among outside counsel? These questions were the topic of a special episode of LawNext, recorded live during Legalweek 2020 in New York City with a panel of four corporate counse...

In the legal industry, the concept of design thinking has become synonymous with the name Margaret Hagan . Director of the Legal Design Lab at Stanford Law School's Center on the Legal Profession , she is also a lecturer at the Stanford d.school , a ubiquitous speaker at legal conferences worldwide, and a leading advocate for making the law more accessible. After graduating from Stanford Law in 20...

In multiple ways, Stacy Butler is immersed in seeking to innovate the justice system and the delivery of legal services.  As director of the Innovation for Justice program at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, she leads students in thinking critically about the power of technology and innovation to close the justice gap. As president of the board of Step Up To Justice , she...

It was an epiphany, of sorts, for Greg Garman . In 2015, after 18 years at the same firm, including several as managing partner, he came to believe that most firms operated under a broken business model. Within weeks, he and several colleagues left the firm to start a smaller, more innovative practice, and he began to develop the concept for LawClerk , a marketplace where solos and small firms can...

Jim Sandman may be one of the most impassioned advocates in the United States for ensuring access to justice for all. As president of the Legal Services Corporation since 2011, he oversees an organization that funds free civil legal services to more than 130 legal aid programs throughout the country. As a frequent speaker and advocate, he forcefully makes the case for equal access to justice.  In...

Jeroen Plink was named in 2018 as CEO of Clifford Chance Applied Solutions , a subsidiary of the international law firm Clifford Chance that designs and develops software to address clients' business challenges. He is responsible for product development and go-to-market strategy for all its products, including CC Dr@ft, a legal document automation platform.  Plink is a legal technology veteran who...

As executive director of the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism , Jayne Reardon oversees programs and initiatives to increase the civility and professionalism of attorneys and judges, create inclusiveness in the profession, and promote increased service to the public. In this special edition of LawNext recorded live at the recent Clio Cloud Conference in San Diego, Reardon joined...

In one of a series of special reports recorded live at the recent Clio Cloud Conference, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi is joined by Nehal Madhani, an attorney and the founder and CEO of the cloud-based IP filing software Alt Legal. Before starting Alt Legal, Madhani practiced as an attorney at Kirkland & Ellis. He is a Python/Django developer and serves on the board of Django-NYC, a nonprofit organizat...

In another of a series of special reports recorded live at the Clio Cloud Conference, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi interviews Ed Walters, CEO and cofounder of the online legal research company Fastcase.  Under Ed's leadership, Fastcase has grown to become one of the world's largest legal publishers, currently serving more than 800,000 subscribers from around the world. He is an adjunct professor at th...

After 10 years as a lawyer at two leading transactional law firms, Haley Altman decided there should be a better way to structure the workflow around the many deals in which she was involved. So in 2016, she left law practice to found Doxly, a technology platform designed to transform the archaic and chaotic process of managing transactions into one that is streamlined and efficient.  Last August,...

In 2018, Mark Britton left Avvo , the often-controversial company he founded in 2006 and led as CEO until he sold it early last year to web behemoth Internet Brands. Soon after, he joined us here on LawNext in Episode 11 for an insightful conversation about why he started the company, why he sold it, and why he left.  At the recent Clio Cloud Conference in San Diego, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi had t...

George Psiharis was employee number six at Clio, which he joined shortly after the practice management company was founded in 2008. Now, he is COO of an enterprise with more than 400 employees and growing, responsible for customer success, business development and data operations.  Psiharis also oversees Clio's annual Legal Trends Report , the fourth of which was released at the recent Clio Cloud...

Nineteen years ago, Mark Harris and Alec Guettel founded Axiom , a pioneering service to provide on-demand legal talent to corporate legal departments, growing it into a company with a roster of more than 2,000 lawyers that works with over half of the Fortune 100, while also developing technology and managed services arms.   Last February, gearing up for a possible IPO, Axiom spun off its technolo...

The seventh-annual Clio Cloud Conference recently wrapped up in San Diego. In this special edition of LawNext, host Bob Ambrogi sat down at the conference for a conversation with Jack Newton, cofounder and CEO of Clio , to talk about the conference and the company.  With Clio having recently announced a $250 million funding round — one of the largest ever for a legal technology company — there was...

In August, a Utah task force on access to justice issued a report that called for "profoundly reimagining the way legal services are regulated in order to harness the power of entrepreneurship, capital, and machine learning in the legal arena."  Two days later, the Utah Supreme Court voted unanimously to approve the report's recommendations, including substantially loosening regulatory restriction...

In LawNext Episode 48 , host Bob Ambrogi traveled to Toronto to record a live interview with the founders of the AI-driven legal research platform ROSS Intelligence , CEO Andrew Arruda and CTO Jimoh Ovbiagele , in which they discussed the company's rise from startup in 2014 to a more mature and established company.  In this second interview recorded in Toronto, we take a deep dive into the artific...

Ralph Baxter spent nearly a quarter century as chairman and CEO of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, leading its growth from a regional San Francisco law firm specializing in municipal finance to one of the world's largest firms with offices worldwide and a diverse array of practices. Along the way, both Baxter and Orrick earned kudos for their many innovations in the delivery and pricing of legal se...