The Legal Ops Podcast

Alex and Elliot discuss: * The podcast heading to CGI 2023! * A recent survey of perceptions of legal department efficiency * Current attitudes to generative AI in legal practice * Gartner's 2023 report on core capabilities for legal operations technology LINKS Legal's role in revenue generation: https://www.legaldive.com/news/legal-department-revenue-generation-contract-negotiations-onit-elr-repo...

Raymond Blyd is seriously into legal tech. His websites, Legal Complex and Legal Pioneer, showcase the legal tech market by highlighting the most innovative brands and, more importantly, the numbers. How much capital is flowing into legal tech? How has the funding market changed in recent times? Who are the winners and losers? What does all this tell us about the current trends and likely future d...

Alex and Elliot discuss: * The release of GPT-4 * GPT-4 passes the Uniform Bar Exam * Microsoft announces Copilot for Office online * Copying GPT for under $600, by using GPT LINKS Release of GPT-4: https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/14/23638033/openai-gpt-4-chatgpt-multimodal-deep-learning GPT-4 has passed the Uniform Bar Exam: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2023/03/17/how-gpt-4-mastered-the-enti...

Interest in artificial intelligence has skyrocketed in the past few months thanks to rapid advances in the GPT language model and, equally importantly, many vendors incorporating the model into their products and services. But what does this mean for the legal industry, both now and in the future? To answer this question we invited Mary O’Carroll and Cai GoGwilt onto the podcast. Mary is currently...

Alex and Elliot discuss: * A roundup of legal tech investments in 2022 including their thoughts on the trends for 2023 * Microsoft’s potential integration of ChatGPT into Outlook and Word, and what this would mean for the legal industry * Why Elliot is hanging out for the rumoured-to-be-upcoming 15.5 inch M2 MacBook Air LINKS 2022 legal tech investment: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2023/01/20...

It's the start of the year and time for a new round of legal tech predictions! In this episode we discuss a bunch of predictions from Gartner, including what we do and don't agree with, and why. Here's a sneak peak of the issues covered: * Big growth in the proportion of funding spent on legal tech * Replacing lawyers with non-lawyers * Ever increasing automation * Capturing the benefits of CLM, o...

Carl Morrison is the Director of Legal Operations at MGM Resorts International, based in Las Vegas. He began his legal career as a paralegal, working primarily in litigation support and legal project management. He progressed to management roles in which he lead teams of paralegals to efficiently deliver complex discovery and document review initiatives, eventually combining his existing skills wi...

Nam Truong is the head of Digital and Innovation at Law Squared, an innovative and young law firm based in Melbourne, Australia. Nam is relatively new to the legal industry, having spent a number of years working with digital products in the financial services industry. This non-legal background, combined with the blank canvas of Law Squared's existing tech stack, enabled Nam and the firm to esche...

Zach Posner is a co-founder and managing partner of The Legal Tech Fund, an investment fund which focuses exclusively on early stage legal tech start ups. He is an accomplished entrepreneur himself, having started and sold three companies in a variety of industries. In a wide ranging and fascinating conversation, we covered many aspects of the legal tech investment world, including: * What is uniq...

In this Talking Tech episode Alex and Elliot speak with Matt Patel, co-founder and COO of Malbek. Malbek provides provides contract review and management software solutions to companies across the globe. LINKS Malbek website: https://www.malbek.io/ Matt Patel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-patel-36680a9

Electra Japonas is the founder and CEO of The Law Boutique, a legal optimisation consultancy which aims to turn law departments into commercial enablers by supercharging their business through legal design. Electra and TLB are on a mission to drive efficiency through standardization. Their first two contract standardization projects, OneNDA and OneDPA, have received widespread adoption and acclaim...

Alex and Elliot chat about: * Why are investors pouring money into legal technology? * Is it getting easier to switch legal tech vendors? * Google's move into e-signature and what it means for other markets * AirSlate's recent $51.5m capital raise * Why Alex isn't wearing his Apple Watch any more (most of the time) Thanks to HBR Consulting for sponsoring this episode. Find out more about HBR here:...

In this Talking Tech episode Alex and Elliot speak with Kevin Clem and Lauren Chung from HBR Consulting. HBR is one of the world's largest legal operations consulting firms, headquartered in Chicago with operations throughout the USA, Canada and the UK. In addition to consulting on all aspects of legal operations, technology and strategy, HBR conducts an annual law department survey to analyse and...

Meera Klemola and Astrid Kohlmeier are legal design pioneers. They are both teachers, speakers and writers, specialising in the application of design principles to legal services delivery. Both have consulted on this topic to the world's largest law firms and in-house teams. For this episode we sat down with Meera and Astrid to discuss their book, "The Legal Design Book", which was published in 20...

Alex and Elliot chat about: * A recent survey suggesting lawyers are (possibly) moving away from MS Word * Recent capital raisings by Evisort, SirionLabs and Dilitrust * The M2 MacBook Air and what's to like (and not like) about it LINKS Lawyers moving away from MS Word: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2022/05/25/are-some-inhouse-lawyers-falling-out-of-love-with-word/ Evisort: https://www.prnewsw...

Alex and Elliot interview Eyal Iffergan, Managing Director, Legal Business Advisory at Hyperion Global Partners. Hyperion provides legal operations consultancy services to legal teams across the world. In this episode, Eyal, Alex and Elliot discuss technology roadmaps and data analytics, including: * What a technology roadmap is, why it's important in both private practice and in-house and how it...

The Global Institute is the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium's flagship conference, which is held annually in Las Vegas, USA. The event was most recently held in May 2022 and attracted around 2,500 attendees from the legal operations ecosystem globally. In this episode we transport you to the conference via the many recordings we made at the event. We interviewed speakers, fellow attendees, l...

Alex and Elliot chat about: * The (literal) road to the 2022 CLOC Global Institute * Legal tech capital raisings by LinkSquares, Filevine and Athennian * ServiceNow expanding further into the legal market This episode would not be possible without the support of HBR Consulting. If you're attending CGI2022, make sure to visit their booth. You can find more information about them here: https://www.h...

Want the best productivity tips from your peers in the legal industry? This is the episode for you! Recently we asked our followers on LinkedIn to post their best productivity tips. This comprises the philosophies, tools and other awesome stuff that they just can't live without. And we got a great response! In this episode Alex and Elliot go through all the tips, adding their analysis and views. T...

In this Talking Tech episode Alex and Elliot interview Catherine Moynihan, Senior Director, Strategic Intelligence and Advisory at Hyperion Global Partners. Hyperion provides legal operations consultancy services to legal teams across the world. In addition, their core business historically was the development of in-depth and high-quality research reports on all aspects of the legal tech market. I...

Alex and Elliot chat about: * How Alex uses the iOS focus mode to control notifications * A bunch of legal tech capital raisings... * Time by Ping and Zero Systems: automated time-based billing * Common Paper: contracts as APIs * Ex Parte: predicting litigation outcomes * Thirdfort: AML / KYC compliance for law firms LINKS Time by Ping: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2022/03/01/time-by-pings-rya...

In celebration of International Women's Day 2022 we spoke with Jodie Baker about the representation of women in the legal tech industry. Jodie is one of the founders of WALTA, the Women of Australian Legal Technology Association, as well as being a lawyer and a highly successful legal tech entrepreneur. We covered many aspects of this important topic, including: * How the representation of women i...

Alex and Elliot chat about: * Checkbox's recent US$4.5m capital raise * LawNext's new legal tech directory * Google's AI-based contract review service, Contract DocAI * Whether or not lawyers should have an ethical obligation to be efficient (spoiler: probably not) LINKS Checkbox capital raise: https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/articles/checkbox-raises-6-3-m-to-take-automated-app-builder-globa...

We’re back! It’s a new year and that means almost every legal tech publication has its own predictions for 2022 and beyond. To save you reading them, and to add some spice, Alex and Elliot discuss the eight predictions they find to be the most interesting, compelling and, in some cases… the most wrong. They cover: * AI and Machine Learning * Platformization * Blockchain * Spend on technology vs pe...

And… that’s a wrap for 2021! Alex and Elliot are joined by a very special guest to reflect on the year and cast their minds forward to 2022. They discuss the podcast’s incredible growth, their favourite episodes and what they’ve learned from the awesome guests who have appeared on the show this year. They also offer their predictions on what will happen in legal ops in 2022, including the changes...