Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast

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In this podcast episode, Jackie shares her personal journey from working as a lawyer to founding Clearbrief, an AI-powered litigation analysis tool that integrates with Microsoft Word to assist with research, citations, and document management. Jackie and Charlie discuss the challenges women founders face in getting venture capital attention and support, even when their offerings are high quality. Jackie spoke about the importance of women legal tech startup leaders speaking confidently about their product and its market prospects (especially when, as was the case with Jackie’s own early product development efforts, the assessment of product prospects is based on feedback arising out of literally hundreds of customer interviews). Charlie and Jackie also talk about the difficulties of marketing a product to senior law firm decision-makers (who, after all, control budgets) based not only on the product’s firm-wide and enterprise-wide benefits but also on the product’s prospects for improving the quality of life for junior lawyers and paralegals. Charlie and Jackie cover the implications of AI on the legal profession, including AI’s potential impact on billing practices as technology continues to drive efficiency.

In this episode, your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, and Dan Broderick discuss: How Dan started BlackBoiler after practicing law for 7 years, having gotten the idea for Blackboiler while reviewing large numbers of contracts for a client and realizing how much of the work could be automated. BlackBoiler’s focus on automating high-volume contract review and markup during the negotiation phase, with BlackBoiler using machine learning AI to learn from historical edits and rule sets in order to suggest edits in tracked changes. BlackBoiler’s target market consists principally of corporate legal departments, with people in those departments - and in other departments in the enterprise - using BlackBoiler’s software to help them review contracts more efficiently and to empower business users who “touch” contracts frequently, but who aren’t lawyers. What some of the challenges are in selling AI, including the challenge (and importance) of separating hype from reality and getting customers to think “problem-first,” not “AI-first.” How BlackBoiler uses machine learning, but currently not of the generative AI type, as the tasks that Blackboiler carries out are more a matter of text-classification than text-generation. However, Dan does point out that generative AI may be helpful for purposes of initial drafting and finding clauses. For legal tech startup leaders, some of Dan’s key pieces of advice are finding the determination to get through business highs and lows and making sure to reward positive team dynamics.

· Otto is CEO of TermScout, which provides data and analytics on market terms in contracts to reduce friction in negotiations. · Otto was motivated to start TermScout after seeing startups overpay for legal services due to a lack of data on market terms. · TermScout uses AI and human review to analyze contracts and provide market data on common clauses. · TermScout's offering helps lawyers know what's "market" to resolve disputes over contract terms. TermScout's customers are both the contracting parties and their legal teams. · TermScout also offers contract certification to validate a vendor's contract as balanced and have it labeled as such. · Otto sees room for more contract standardization not only by way of the use of standard forms, but also through the standardization of various contracts' overall concepts. · When it comes to the interoperation of various legal tech vendors' offerings, Otto and Charlie discuss how legal tech tools should ideally interoperate via APIs using a standard schema. · Otto and Charlie also consider how the onus is on legal tech companies to coordinate standards and seamless interoperability to improve customer experience and reduce the drag on software use that comes from having to constantly shift among different legal tech applications.

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Podcast host, Charlie Uniman, and Steve Fretzin discuss: Steve's website: https://www.fretzin.com/ All Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast episodes at: https://legalfocus.libsyn.com/

In this 51st podcast episode, your podcast host Charlie Uniman interviews Gaurav Oberoi, CEO and co-founder of Lexion (www.lexion.ai). Gaurav talks about how, as a software developer and not a lawyer but who recognized the potential of natural language processing AI, he ventured into the legal tech industry. He co-founded Lexion to focus on making sense of contracts for corporate enterprises. During its history, Lexion transformed from being a simple repository for contracts to a CLM for an entire organization that serves as an operational workflow platform to speed up deals. Gaurav also describes how Lexion harnesses AI to, among other things, enhance contract visibility, manage renewals and reminders, and provide powerful search and reporting features. According to Gaurav: Some of Lexion’s chief areas of focus include customer requirements and rapid implementation, and learning from competitors' shortcomings (notably, the high failure rates of CLMs generally). Lexion found that other CLM systems' complexities and steep learning curves significantly deter adoption. So, Lexion designed its system to integrate seamlessly into an organization's existing workflow, offering immediate functionality without requiring extensive setup or training. This, and Lexion’s focus on integrating with platforms like email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Salesforce, promotes high adoption rates. Lexion has recently raised funds in an environment of challenging macroeconomic conditions and increased diligence from potential investors. Gaurav attributes Lexion’s recent fundraising success to, in part, the company's robust business model, dedicated team, high customer retention, and high user engagement. As Gaurav notes, Lexion's vision to serve corporate operations teams and not just the legal department (by giving just a couple of examples, automating standardized sales contracts and employment offer letters) was also an attraction to potential investors. Gaurav concludes the podcast by describing some of Lexion’s guiding business principles, including the company’s obsession with the customer, an insistence on clear written communication among team members, and a company-wide commitment to transparency regarding company direction and individual and team performance.

Among the subjects that your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, discusses with Kevin are:

At the outset of the podcast, Andy shares his professional background, which spans over 20 years in the technology industry, building software solutions for various industries. He also talks about his transition to legal tech and his excitement about the future of innovation in the industry. Charlie and Andy discuss Aderant's broad functionalities, including practice management, litigation management, billing, recruiting, and knowledge management. Andy turns next to his current focus on innovation and disruption in the legal industry through data analytics and AI. Andy mentions Aderant's upcoming Momentum conference (May 2023), where it plans to unveil new technology for the legal tech space. Andy and Charlie close the podcast by covering futuristic legal tech trends (including blockchain (not "crypto") and the metaverse), Aderant's plans for staying ahead of the technology curve, and the pride that Aderant takes in its ability to evolve with the changing needs of clients and its continuing to be a leader in the market.

Our guests today are Mike Zourhi, the co-founder and CEO of Painworth, and Bryan Saunders, Painworth's Director of Growth, Marketing, & UX/UI. Mike kicks off the podcast by telling us his story where, as the victim of a hit-and-run by a drunk driver, Mike was inspired to create Painworth. Mike and Bryan describe Painworth's aim: to be the "voice" of the personal injury victim in settlement discussions of the victim's claims. Painworth does this by educating the victim with award estimates for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages that will carry weight with lawyers and insurance adjusters because they are based on Painworth's machine learning-driven reviews of relevant court-based and other documentation relevant to award calculation. Painworth's secret sauce is that it was built for use by personal injury victims (i.e., "regular people") themselves. Mike, Bryan, and Charlie discuss: - How Painworth simplifies processes for its users without sacrificing its use of a sophisticated approach at the back-end for award estimation, - Painworth's process for educating its "regular-people" customers in its web app's use and its processes for iterating on UI/UX improvements. - Painworth's roll-out plans for a US-based web app, - How Painworth has succeeded in gaining acceptance by both lawyers and insurance adjusters for Painworth’s use by personal injury victims, and - Business events that Mike and Bryan are most proud of to date.

Podcast host, Charlie Uniman, sits down (virtually) with Jerry Ting of Evisort to talk about: (i) How Jerry planted the seed for founding Evisort while still a student at Harvard Law School (and the role that serendipity played in Jerry's finding his co-founder), (ii) what law schools can (should?) do when it comes to training lawyers-to-be in the art of legal innovation and what perspective law students can bring to innovation in legal, (iii) just what it is that Evisort does in the contract lifecycle management space (with the discussion focusing on, among other things, Evisort's out-of-the-box usability and how Evisort really does help take the grunt work out of contract review), (iv) Evisort's success in marketing to in-house legal departments and other business enterprise personnel involved with contracts (here Jerry covers how Evisort has achieved success by helping those departments transform from being a "brake" on enterprise success to becoming a "gas pedal" that accelerates business success), and (v) the very personally gratifying story behind one of the business successes that Jerry and his team are most proud of to date.

Episode 46 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast) - An Interview with Zach Posner, co-founder and Managing of The Legal Tech Fund (www.legaltech.com) Interested in the subject of how legal tech startups can get funded? Thought so - that's why this is a "must listen" episode. Here Zach Posner of The Legal Tech Fund (TLTF) (i) talks about fund-pitching strategies, (ii) offers advice for legal tech startups when facing the headwinds in today's economy and (iii) discusses TLTF's forthcoming Summit conference (December 7 - 9, 2022 in Miami; register here by the November 23, 2022 deadline: https://www.tltfsummit.com) and the Summit's StartUp Challenge (apply here by the August 31, 2022 deadline:(https://www.tltfsummit.com/apply-now) ).

Luke Yingling founded his legal tech startup, Analytica Legalis, about a year ago during his second year in law school. As you'll hear from Luke, his company has already raised its pre-revenue seed-stage financing and is looking forward to launching its beta version (with law firm beta testers already lined up and eager to go) this coming August. Hear Luke (a) chart his path from law student to legal tech startup founder, (b) relate how, as a student entrepreneur, he was able to take advantage of programs at his law school and elsewhere aimed at assisting very early-stage student-founded startups, (c) describe what Analytica Legalis does and how it distinguishes itself from other tools for litigators that analyze judges' opinions, (d) explain the preparations his company undertook to ready itself for its beta testing program, (d) also explain how he attracted investors that were interested in funding a pre-revenue legal tech startup, (e) discuss the importance of data visualization techniques for making his company's UI intuitive and easy-to-use and (f) tell listeners of the pride he and his team have taken in generating both commercial and academic excitement for the results available from the built "from-the-ground-up" version of Analytica Legalis' machine learning software and in innovating in the judge analytics space.

Episode 44 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), an interview with Susann Funke, co-founder and CEO of LEX AI (www.lexai.co). As Susann tells us, LEX AI has built proprietary natural language processing tools that automate the preparation of accurate and readable summaries of often voluminous regulations for use by lawyers and business people alike. From there, Susann charts her path from practicing law to co-founding LEX AI . In doing so, Susann describes how a massive client project - with a very tight deadline - motivated her to find a way to automate the immense amount of manual effort that the project required. Susann also explains how LEX AI: - has developed key metrics that show how its tools free timekeepers from low value work that clients won't pay for - gathers valuable feedback from its top-of -funnel sales efforts - has benefitted from building a diversified team, particularly when it comes to its solution building and cross-border marketing efforts - uses social media (including Instagram and soon TikTok) to bolster its marketing efforts (particularly among younger lawyers and younger business people) - finds a welcoming user base inside law school and university classrooms

Episode 43 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast) -- An interview with Jace Lynch, COO of HyperDraft (www.hyperdraft.ai), and Sean Greaney, HyperDraft's General Counsel. HyperDraft is an AI-driven full service document generation, editing and closing platform for lawyers and other legal professionals. Listen to Jace and Sean describe: (1) HyperDraft's origin story, (2) their company's commitment to designed-in simplicity and ease of use, (3) HyperDraft's own brand of customer on-boarding (ranging from an intuitive UI, helpful app tools tips, written materials and video explainers), (4) their aim to expand from currently targeting North American customers to targeting the European legal tech market next, (5) their successin selling HyperDraft to boutique and other SMB law firms, as well as to solo practitioners and (6) how and why they are most proud of HyperDraft's team, product value, software development responsiveness and short time-to-value for HyperDraft's customers.

Episode 42 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast) -- An Interview with Raman Malik, founder and CEO of Rhetoric (www.rhetoric.app) Most leaders at legal tech startups present at one time or another to existing and prospective stakeholders (most importantly, to customer and investor prospects). So, it stands to reason that those leaders could use an app that makes getting presentation feedback as easy as clicking a button. Raman and his team have designed Rhetoric to be just that app; a "Grammarly for presentations," if you will (as Rhetoric itself puts it on its website) . Raman discusses (1) how Rhetoric works, (2) the growing importance of asynchronous presentation-giving, (3) several of Rhetoric's chief use cases and (4) Rhetoric's success in closing a seed round. Raman also gives some presentation-making pointers of his own (including his noting of two common presentation mistakes; namely, not soliciting enough feedback and ignoring the importance of tailoring the sequencing of a presentation’s topics for each different audience group). Finally, Raman explains how he and his team pride themselves on how carefully they define their goals, while at the same time being open to goal-revision as the Rhetoric team strives to learn, iterate and improve quickly.

In this 41st episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), we lear that guest Scott Leigh's company, AltFee (www.alterfeeco.com) is on a mission. And that mission is to help lawyers (whether practicing solo, at small or medium-sized firms or at Big Law law firms) gain the freedom to implement alternative fee arrangements and break out of the billable hour model. We'll hear Scott talk about how he and his team have created an app that brings repeatable methods to lawyer/client alternative fee discussions - an app that, among other things: (1) encourages healthy and disciplined upfront conversations about matter scoping and (2) brings greater transparency to alternative fee setting. Moreover, Scott describes how AltFee's app helps lawyers build a repository of alternative fee setting best practices where lawyers (senior and junior) can go for guidance as new matters arise. Scott also talks about his company's "land and expand" strategy when selling into law firms and about the pride that he and his colleagues take in AltFee's thought leadership efforts to educate lawyers about alternative fee arrangement management. In addition, Scott provides insight into AltFee's app design and post-sale customer success efforts.

Episode 40 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast -- An Interview with Christy Burke, Founder of Burke & Company In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), podcast host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Christy Burke, founder of Burke & Company (www.burke-company.com). As Burke & Company says on its website, "Legal technology providers need strong, creative PR representation to market successfully. Since 2004, Burke & Company has provided the highest standard in PR and marketing for legal tech." In addition to discussing how Christy came to found her company and what kinds of communications-related services her company provides firms and companies in legal and legal tech, Christy offers listeners a "masterclass" on legal tech sales-related communications by providing some answers to the following questions: (i) What are the most significant steps that legal tech startup leaders can take to “up their game” when it comes to communicating their company’s value proposition to law firms and in-house legal departments? (ii) What are some of the chief “unforced errors” that you’ve seen legal tech startup leaders commit in dealing with the press and in undertaking social media campaigns? (iii) Because legal tech startup founders often ask for tips on establishing their thought leadership bona fides, are there any pointers that you can offer to assist them in using their already existing subject-matter expertise to enhance their credibility as thought leaders?

In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), podcast host Charlie Uniman interviews Stephen Dowling, founder and CEO of Dublin, Ireland-based Trialview. As TrialView puts it on its website (www.trialview.com}: "Quickly and easily digitise the trial process and save time, effort and money. . . . [Moreover,] TrialView’s unique synchronising technology enables document led hearings to be conducted remotely." We learn from Stephen how his founding of TrialView began, as is the case with many other legal tech startup founders, with frustrations he faced while practicing law. Stephen explains that, as a junior trial lawyer working on long-running litigations, he wondered why his and his colleagues' wrangling with many thousands of documents couldn't be handled better with the introduction of digital technologies. As Stephen's developed his thinking about the "digitization of trial work," he came to realize that it it went beyond just the digitizing document review (a step that was already being addressed by e-discovery companies). As Stephen came to see it, digitization tools could also be applied to the task of coordinating, in real time at trial: (i) the presentation of trial documents and (ii) the collaboration among the parties to the litigation in dealing with those documents and their presentation in court. Stephen goes on to discuss, among other topics: (A) How TrialView went from its first, very minimum viable, product to the initial funding round for the company and the company's development of a fully-featured trial management tool. (B) The way in which the COVID pandemic accelerated TrialView's development of video features in support of trials and other dispute resolution mechanisms that were required to be conducted on a fully-remote basis. (C) Stephen's belief that, even post-pandemic, we will witness a hybrid approach to conducting trials, mediations and arbitrations (where much of what was formerly done in-person will be carried out remotely, but with a core set of dispute elements more frequently than not being handled in-person). (D) What marketing approaches TrialView has taken successfully, especially in the face of getting both judges and frequently litigating parties (such as insurance companies) "on board" with TrialView's use (with Stephen also pointing out here how TrialView has partnered with companies that handle trial-related tasks outside of TrialView's purview to call attention to TrialView's offering) . (E) TrialView's penetration of markets outside Ireland and the UK, including especially its targeting of the deposition-taking market in the US (F) How Stephen and his TrialView colleagues are most proud of the role TrialView played in keeping Irish courts functioning at the outset of the COVID pandemic.

Episode 38 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast — Interview with Zeb Anderson, co-founder and CEO of LegalQ In this episode of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Zeb Anderson, co-founder and CEO of Legal Q (www.legalq.io). As LegalQ describes its offering on its website, “Searching [for an attorney] online feels overwhelming. Referrals from friends and family leading to dead ends. Often the only way to get legal help is by talking to an attorney. Use the LegalQ app to get help today [and] a licensed attorney will help you [to]: Know your options and legal rights, Avoid common legal pitfalls and mistakes, [and] Get personalized guidance for unique legal issues.” After talking about Zeb’s professional background and LegalQ’s product, Charlie’s discussion with Zeb digs deeply into: