Pioneers and Pathfinders

Our guest this week is Christina Wojcik, Head of Innovation & Partnerships at Pierson Ferdinand LLP—and a true pioneer in legal tech and professional services. Christina's career started on the business side of law, where she built high-performing teams and supported major transactions and reviews. As technology began reshaping the legal landscape, she leaned in, becoming one of the early leaders...

We’re joined this week by Melissa Lauderdale, an executive director for a large company, and someone who is a true force in legal innovation. Melissa has spent her career transforming how legal teams operate, driving efficiency and building inclusive, high-performing teams in the fast-paced world of corporate law. From her work modernizing legal operations at Exelon to securing industry-first regu...

As lawyers ascend to leadership roles within their firms and organizations, they often face difficult challenges such as the need for guidance and coping with feelings of isolation. Our guest this week, Rudhir Krishtel, is dedicated to supporting legal professionals in navigating these issues. As an advisor, Rudhir provides spaces for lawyers, law firms, legal departments, and companies to have me...

Timekeeping and billing have long been pain points for lawyers, but today's guest, Adrian Parlow, is working to change that. As the co-founder and CEO of PointOne, he's leveraging AI to automate time tracking and bill review, helping law firms capture more revenue while reducing administrative burdens. Adrian's path to legal tech began in startup law. After beginning his career at Fenwick & West,...

In this special edition of Pioneers and Pathfinders, we celebrate the fourth anniversary of the podcast. As we look back, one thing stands out: Our guests come from a wonderfully diverse set of professional backgrounds, but they all share a common thread—a belief that the legal profession can and must evolve to meet the challenges and opportunities of our time. The conversations we've had on this...

This week, we're diving into the world of access to justice with Kristen Sonday, a true trailblazer in making pro bono legal work more efficient and effective. Kristen is the co-founder and CEO of Paladin, an organization dedicated to increasing pro bono engagement while reducing administrative burdens. Through partnerships with law firms, corporate legal teams, bar associations, the US government...

Today, we host a fantastic guest, Barbara Rogers, Vice President of Legal Operations, Strategy & Transformation at Honeywell, a Fortune 500 powerhouse known for developing cutting-edge technologies that tackle global challenges in safety, security, and energy. Barbara is at the heart of driving transformation within the company's legal operations. With a career spanning HR, procurement, and legal,...

Our guest this week, Hal Brooks, is the CEO at HaystackID Group Holdings, a specialized eDiscovery services firm helping corporations and law firms find, understand, and learn from data when facing complex, data-intensive investigations and litigation. Hal is an eDiscovery and litigation technology professional with more than 25 years of experience. He has participated in the acquisition and growt...

We're joined today by Ned Gannon, co-founder and CEO of Coheso, an AI-powered work management platform for in-house legal and compliance teams. At the start of his career, Ned was a corporate attorney, primarily focusing on mergers and acquisitions on behalf of private equity funds. Fascinated by entrepreneurship, he ultimately took the leap into business himself. One of his ventures was co-foundi...

Today, we’re joined by Heidi Alexander, the executive director of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Standing Committee on Lawyer Well-Being, which plans and oversees efforts to enhance the well-being of lawyers, judges, and law students in the Commonwealth. As executive director, Heidi helps lawyers achieve a healthy, positive, and productive balance of work, personal life, and health. Heid...

This week's guest, Marla Crawford, is a respected attorney, strategic advisor, and thought leader with over 35 years of experience in the legal industry. She currently serves as general counsel at Cimplifi, an integrated legal services provider that leverages technology to simplify the experience of eDiscovery and contract analytics for law firms and legal departments. For 22 years, Marla practice...

Today we’re joined by Emily Lippincott, Senior Legal Futurist at Filevine, a legal work platform for law firms and businesses across the United States and Canada. Emily is an attorney with over 16 years of experience in Silicon Valley, both in-house and at law firms, counseling corporate clients from incorporation to public offering or acquisition. Throughout her career, she has focused on law, kn...

This week, we’re revisiting a wonderful discussion with Professor Richard Susskind. In the time since he joined us on the podcast, Richard has been promoted to CBE—Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the King's New Year Honours List 2025 for his “services to Information Technology and to the Law.” Richard has also written a new book, How To Think About AI: A Guide For The Perplexed, in...

This week, we’re talking to Will Norton, the founder and CEO of SimplyAgree, a platform that automates the administrative tasks of a closing—from signature packets to closing binders—so attorneys can focus on getting deals done for their clients. Will’s legal journey began in undergrad, where he double-majored in math and computer science while taking philosophy and history courses. After realizin...

Today we welcome Eric Voogt, the founder and CEO of PROOF, a legal tech company that connects law firms with independent process servers nationwide. Eric started as an engineer for an aircraft manufacturer, but left this profession to attend law school and pursue a career in law. In addition to his work at PROOF, he has been a partner at a Denver law firm for more than two decades. Eric is skilled...

Happy New Year! And welcome back to another year of Pioneers and Pathfinders! This week, we're joined by Denise Robinson, founding principal and Belonging & Well-Being Consultant at The Still Center, a consultancy that facilitates personal well-being, interpersonal connection, and organizational inclusion through mindfulness-based diversity and inclusion methods. Denise started her career as an em...

In our last episode before the new year, we're talking with Ralph Baxter, a true pioneer in the legal industry. Ralph is a strategic advisor to law firms, legal tech companies, and corporate law departments, but he is probably best known for his leadership at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. As chair and CEO of Orrick for more than two decades, he launched several groundbreaking initiatives tha...

We're pleased to welcome back Ed Walters, a thought leader in legal tech and innovation. Since Ed last spoke with us, he has become the chief strategy officer at vLex, which merged with Ed's previous company, Fastcase. vLex is a platform using AI solutions to streamline workflows and provide lawyers with greater access to knowledge and resources. About a year ago, the company launched Vincent AI,...

Today's guest, Taylor Sartor, is the creator and legal director of FosterPower, a movement to improve the lives and futures of youth in foster care in Florida, by providing them information on their benefits, protections, and legal rights. Taylor is also a senior attorney at the L. David Shear Children’s Law Center, where she represents youth in foster care. Taylor focuses on issues related to hum...

This week, we welcome Nelson Quintero, the co-founder and chief operating officer of ECFX, a company that fills in the gaps in legal workflows with automated solutions. Nelson is an attorney with over 20 years of experience in the field of intellectual property, focusing on patent and trademark prosecution for both US and foreign clients. ECFX's main solution is an automated process for managing t...

This week, we are replaying the latest installment in our virtual roundtable series, titled “Understanding the Legal and Commercial Challenges of Disinformation and Deepfakes.” For those who may not be familiar, a deepfake is a type of synthetic media where images, videos, or audio may seem real, but have been manipulated or generated with artificial intelligence. While some synthetic or manipulat...

Today’s episode of Pioneers and Pathfinders takes a slightly different approach. We are joined by Tony Thai, a returning guest, who is the CEO and Chief Engineer of HyperDraft, a contract automation software platform for various enterprises. We’re also joined by Byong Kim, Senior Director of Technology Innovations at Seyfarth. He runs Seyfarth Labs, which is a tech R&D team that leads the way in a...

Our guest this week is a leading thinker on the application of generative AI in the legal profession. Dr. Megan Ma is the associate director of Stanford’s Law, Science, and Technology Program, as well as the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics—better known as CodeX. She also teaches courses in computational law and insurance tech. Dr. Ma has a background in a variety of fields: She majored in po...

This week, we're joined by Nicole Clark, founder and CEO of Trellis, a state trial court research and analytics platform. For several years, Nicole was an attorney in private practice, handling business litigation and labor and employment matters. The idea for Trellis came from her experience doing research for complicated summary judgement motions. Nicole worked with software developers on an ear...

Today's guest is Ted Theodoropoulos, CEO of Infodash, a cloud-first legal intranet and extranet platform. Ted has over two decades of experience in the legal tech industry, having led the development and delivery of innovative solutions for law firms. Over the course of his career, he has worked as a database engineer at Microsoft, senior vice president of Bank of America, and president of Acrowir...