This week, the College of Law Practice Management named Digitory Legal winner of its 2021 Innovation Award for a unique partnership with Kaiser Foundation Health Plan to drive diversity, equity and inclusion among its outside counsel by applying analytics to billing data to get a deeper understanding of the type and quality of work firms are assigning to diverse lawyers.  As our guest Catherine Krow, Digitory Legal’s founder and CEO, explains, the company’s primary mission is to bring predictability and transparency to legal billing and pricing. But the company also has a strong commitment to driving DEI in the legal industry. It has been using its analytics to help firms gain insights into whether diverse lawyers are getting the same career-advancing opportunities as the non-diverse lawyers, and to then apply those insights through what Krow calls “mindful staffing.” Krow left a partnership at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, one of the world’s largest law firms, to start Digitory Legal, and has never looked back. In addition to this week’s COLPM award, the company last year was named disruptor of the year by Litera’s Changing Lawyer awards. Krow joins us today to share the story of her company and to talk about using data to drive DEI. Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Woodpecker, legal document automation for solo and small firms.   A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

LawNext

Ep 141: Digitory Legal Founder Catherine Krow on Using Billing Data to Drive Diversity

You would be hard-pressed to find two people in legal technology more experienced in user interface and user experience design than Nicole Bradick and Andy Wishart. Bradick is founder and CEO of the legal tech design and development firm Theory and Principle. Wishart is chief product officer at contract lifecycle management company Agiloft and formerly was co-founder and chief technology officer of Contract Express, the contract automation software that Thomson Reuters acquired in 2015.  While both individually have years of experience designing legal tech products, Bradick and Wishart also recently worked together on a project to redesign Agiloft’s UI and UX. That collaboration offers a case study in product design and of why good design matters in a legal technology product.  In today’s episode, they share the story of why Agiloft initiated the redesign, the process by which Bradick and her team went about making recommendations, and how Agiloft is incorporating those recommendations into its product roadmap.  This is a return appearance on LawNext for Bradick, who was the guest for our very first episode.  Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Woodpecker, legal document automation for solo and small firms.   A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Ep 140: Nicole Bradick and Andy Wishart on Why UI and UX Matter in Legal Tech

The ABA Journal dubbed Fred Rooney the father of legal incubators. He developed the first incubator in 2007 at City University of New York Law School, spawning the launch of some 70 incubators in the years since, many with Fred’s guidance or based on his model. While most are in the U.S., Rooney is now helping create incubators worldwide, in countries as diverse as the Dominican Republic, Bulgaria and Pakistan. In fact, as we recorded this episode, Rooney was just back from the Gaza Strip, where he was developing an incubator for young Palestinian lawyers funded by the United Nations. The legal incubator model that Rooney created serves dual missions. It helps young lawyers develop the business and practice skills they need to launch their own community-based legal practices, providing them space, mentoring and training. It also helps lawyers build practices that address the needs of low- and moderate-income individuals by offering affordable, community-based services. A recent ABA survey concluded that incubators are effective at supporting the career development of lawyers interested in starting solo and small-firm practices.  Rooney believes that for lawyers to do good in their communities, they first need to do well -- to be sufficiently successful to be able to offer low- and pro-bono services. Incubators, he believes, give young lawyers the leg up they need to both do well and do good. On this episode of LawNext, he tells how he came to build the first incubator, explains how they operate, and relates how he began to build them outside the U.S.  Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Woodpecker, legal document automation for solo and small firms.   A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Ep 139: Fred Rooney, the Father of Legal Incubators, On Helping Young Lawyers Do Well to Do Good

Last month, in a marriage of two contract management platforms, Conga acquired Contract Wrangler. For entrepreneur-turned-lawyer-turned-entrepreneur Neil Peretz, it was the conclusion of a journey that began five years earlier, when he founded Contract Wrangler with a vision of a contracts platform that would be more than just a repository, more than able to simply identify key clauses, but that would actually be able to provide answers to what was in those contracts.  What is it like to start, build and then sell a legal tech company? What were the challenges Peretz faced in developing the product and building a market? How did he see his product as distinct from other CLM platforms in the market? What was it like to see the company he started get acquired? On this episode of LawNext, we discuss those questions and others.  Peretz learned firsthand about the challenges of managing too many contracts as general counsel for multiple venture-backed financial services companies, including Aliya Financial Technologies and Better Finance. Even before becoming a lawyer, he was developing software to solve real-world problems, first as co-founder and CEO of PocketMail Group, which launched the first affordable mobile email service, and then as COO and CFO of Libraria/Sertanty, which used computer models to predict novel chemistries.   Peretz  holds law degrees from the UCLA School of Law and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (where he was a Fulbright Scholar), bachelors and masters degrees from Tufts University, and a specialization certificate from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.   Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Woodpecker, legal document automation for solo and small firms.   A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Ep 138: Contract Wrangler Founder Neil Peretz on Starting, Building and Selling a Legal Tech Company

Gavin McGrane was a litigation attorney in San Francisco when he saw an opportunity to improve how legal professionals interface with the federal courts electronic records system, PACER, and to enable them to better tap into the data and knowledge contained within that system.  In 2012, he founded PacerPro, originally focusing on providing an enhanced interface to the PACER system, but, in the years since, developing it beyond that, into a system that also enables law firms to automate the process of collecting and distributing court documents and properly filing them within a DMS or knowledge system. Now, with a recent Series C investment, PacerPro is working to further develop its product and expand its coverage from federal courts into state courts.  On this episode of LawNext, McGrane joins host Bob Ambrogi to share the history and evolution of the company and discuss where he sees it going next.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Woodpecker, legal document automation for solo and small firms.   A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Ep 137: PacerPro Founder and CEO Gavin McGrane

There may be no more critical issue facing the legal profession than reregulation of legal services. Amid an escalating crisis in access to justice, proponents of regulatory reform argue that the only way to meaningfully address the crisis is to loosen restrictions on non-lawyers investing in and providing legal services.  So critical is the issue that GPSolo, the magazine of the American Bar Association’s Solo, Small Firm and General Practice Division, has devoted its most recent issue to the topic, assembling a roster of contributors who are among the nation’s leading experts on regulatory reform.  In this special LawNext episode in conjunction with GPSolo, five of those contributors come together to share and discuss their views on reregulation: Zachariah DeMeola, director of legal education and the legal profession at the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System. Joseph Gartner, director and counsel, ABA Center for Innovation. Judy Perry Martinez, past president of the ABA and former chair of the ABA’s Presidential Commission on the Future of Legal Services, whose 2016 Report on the Future of Legal Services influenced many of the reform initiatives now underway.  Patrick Palace, the past president of the Washington State Bar Association and current member of the executive council of the National Conference of Bar Presidents and the board of the ABA Center for Innovation, who served as editor of the GPSolo issue.  Vice Chief Justice Ann A. Scott Timmer of the Arizona Supreme Court, who chaired the Arizona Supreme Court’s Task Force on the Delivery of Legal Services, which recommended rules ultimately adopted by the court that created a new tier of legal services provider and eliminated the ban on non-lawyer ownership.   Note: For previous LawNext episodes featuring some of these panelists, see: Supreme Court Justice Ann Timmer on Arizona’s Sweeping Regulatory Reforms (2021). Incoming ABA President Judy Perry Martinez (July 29, 2019).  LawNext Episode 34: Alternative Legal Models – A Panel Discussion (with Patrick Palace and others)(April 9, 2019). Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.

Ep 136: Reregulation of Legal Services: A Panel of Five Leading Experts Discuss

On Aug.1, Hari M. Osofsky took office as dean of Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, after four years as dean of Penn State Law School and nearly two decades of teaching law. Having herself established a reputation for driving innovation, and coming into a school that is already recognized as innovative, her mission is to lead the school’s next chapter of innovation.    But she also arrives as a profound moment of social change in our society and in the legal profession, a moment that has raised new questions about the nature of legal education and the role of law schools in helping to shape the profession. As she steps into this role, where does she start and what challenges does she face?    On this episode of LawNext, Osofsky joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss her new role and to share her thoughts on legal education, bar admission, legal innovation, and legal regulatory reform.    Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Woodpecker, legal document automation for solo and small firms.   A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Ep 135 - Northwestern Law’s New Dean Hari Osofsky On Leading the School’s Next Chapter of Innovation

Zach Posner cofounded The Legaltech Fund in 2020 as the first venture capital firm laser-focused on law and legal technology. But even with that industry focus, he takes a broad view when it comes to what he considers legal tech, looking for startups that have “legal in the middle,” but that may also span fintech, govtech, or consumer tech.    Posner, a three-time entrepreneur before becoming an investor and now managing director of The Legaltech Fund, joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss why he created a fund devoted to legal tech, the opportunities he sees there, and the kinds of companies in which he is interested in investing.    He also shares his advice for entrepreneurs pitching a VC firm and offers his views on the broader investment and innovation landscape in legal tech.  Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Woodpecker, legal document automation for solo and small firms.   A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Ep 134: Zach Posner on The Legaltech Fund, the First VC Firm Dedicated to Legal Tech

Does the billable hour get a bum rap? Nicholas d’Adhemar, founder and CEO of the London-based spend management company Apperio, believes so. The real culprit for out-of-control legal costs is something else altogether, he believes. By identifying it, d’Adhemar says, both clients and law firms will be better positioned to manage legal costs. In this episode of LawNext, d’Adhemar joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss why he believes hourly rates, done right, are often a fairer measure of legal costs than fixed or capped fees. He also discusses his founding of the company in 2013, its development since then, and its drive, launched last year, to significantly expand its market in the United States.    Before founding Apperio, d’Adhemar worked six years as a lawyer for a large international law firm. After completing his MBA at INSEAD, he spent three years working as an investment manager in a private equity firm. Those experiences, he says, taught him that the fewer the surprises in billing, the happier the client and the law firm — the lesson that inspired him to found Apperio. Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Woodpecker, legal document automation for solo and small firms.   A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Ep 133: In Defense of the Billable Hour, with Apperio CEO Nicholas d’Adhemar

Sixteen months after UpCounsel announced it would shut down, it is not only alive and well, but showing double-digit revenue growth, consistent profitability, and accelerating demand for legal services through its lawyer marketplace. Now it is launching a crowdfunding campaign with the mission of bringing legal to the people.    [The crowdfunding campaign opens to the public July 28, but listeners of this podcast can access the private friends and family campaign, with early investor benefits including a lower valuation cap.]   On this episode of LawNext, we look at the Phoenix-like story of how UpCounsel came back from near death, saved at the eleventh hour by new owners and a new management team that reinvented its business model, and why the company is now turning to crowdfunding to raise capital to fuel its growth and development.    To tell this story, we are joined by two of the company’s top executives:    Chief Executive Officer KJ Erickson, a serial entrepreneur who Rolling Stone named in 2017 as one of 25 people shaping the future. Chief Revenue Officer Paul Drobot, a sales veteran who previously led sales at legal tech companies Atrium and Logikcull.    This episode is part of a two-part series on UpCounsel that also includes the LawSites blog post: Exclusive: As UpCounsel Launches Crowdfunding Campaign, the Phoenix-like Story Of Its Rise from Near Shutdown. Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Woodpecker, legal document automation for solo and small firms.   A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Ep 132: Exclusive: How UpCounsel Avoided Shutdown and Why It Is Launching A Crowdfunding Campaign

With his contract-management company having just raised $40 million in Series B funding, Linksquares cofounder and CEO Vishal Sunak is aiming for some big goals, including “to build legal tech solutions that simply weren’t possible before.” In announcing the raise, which brings the company’s total funding to $61.4 million, Sunak vowed that the company will develop its AI technology to “offer functionality no one has seen before,” and that it will soon introduce “a first-of-its-kind product that will change the way businesses complete the contracting process.” Sunak returns to LawNext to discuss this latest funding round and his vision for the future of legal contracting. He was previously a guest on the show in the episode posted on June 2, 2020. That episode goes into more detail about the history of the company and its development.  Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Woodpecker, legal document automation for solo and small firms.   A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Ep 131: With $40M Series B, LinkSquares CEO Sets Sights On The Impossible In Contracts Tech

Mary Shen O’Carroll pioneered the field of legal operations during her 13 years as director of operations, technology and strategy at Google. She was also instrumental in forming the influential organization CLOC – the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium – and was elected its president in 2019.  In April, she walked away from both of those roles, leaving Google and stepping down as CLOC president, to join the contract lifecycle management company Ironclad as chief community officer, where she will scale and lead the company’s global community. “In Ironclad, I see the same mix of magic ingredients of community, vision, and talent that I saw in my early days at Google,” O’Carroll said in announcing the move.  On this episode of LawNext, O’Carroll joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss her new role and the experiences that brought her here. She also shares her thoughts on the accelerating growth of legal operations in recent years and the increasing prominence of CLOC.  Listeners may also be interested in the April 19, 2021, episode of LawNext, in which Ironclad’s CEO Jason Boehmig was interviewed.  Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.  A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Ep 130: Legal Ops Pioneer Mary Shen O’Carroll On Moving From Google To Ironclad

The past year has laid bare, in shockingly explicit detail, the racial inequities of the justice system. Now, LexisNexis and the Historically Black Colleges and University Law School Consortium have partnered to launch a fellowship initiative for 12 law students to spend nine months working to end this systemic racism and further the rule of law.  On this episode of LawNext, we discuss this initiative with two of the fellows who are participating in it, as well as with the president of the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation, which is providing $120,000 to support each fellow with a $10,000 stipend. LexisNexis is also providing each fellow with dedicated mentorship and recurring professional development sessions to enhance their skills in technology, data analytics, and leadership. Joining host Bob Ambrogi are:  Ian McDougall, executive vice president and general counsel of LexisNexis and president of the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation.  Kailyn Kennedy, a fellow from North Carolina Central University School of Law, who received a fellowship to create webinar programs that offer a space for communication, questions, knowledge, and solutions to be shared about the racial discrepancies in legal employment.  Oscar Draughn, a fellow from Florida Agricultural And Mechanical University College of Law, who received a fellowship to create a database of pro se litigant resources in Florida via a digital app with step-by-step tutorials.  Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.  A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Ep 129: The Legal Fellows Tackling Systemic Racism in Law

As the legal profession continues to transform and evolve, how can a law firm or legal department be “future ready”? What are the characteristics that define future-ready organizations and foretell their continued success?  Just out from Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory is its 2021 Future Ready Lawyer Survey Report, documenting the top trends affecting legal professionals and looking at how well prepared law firms and legal departments are to address them. And given that this year’s report comes in the wake of the global pandemic, it considers the events of 2020 and their impact on the profession now and into the future.  To discuss the report and share their insights on it, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by two top executives from Wolters Kluwer: Martin O’Malley, executive vice president and managing director of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory worldwide.  Dean Sonderegger, senior vice president and general manager of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory US. Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.  A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Ep 128: Defining the ‘Future Ready’ Lawyer, with Wolters Kluwer VPs Martin O’Malley and Dean Sonderegger

New findings show that law firms that piloted the Mansfield Rule have grown the racial and ethnic diversity of their leadership by more than 30 times the rate of other firms. These firms have also exceeded the norm in the rates at which racially diverse lawyers progressed into partnership and at which women lawyers progressed into leadership roles.  As the legal industry continues to struggle with diversity, these are notable results – especially considering that the Mansfield Rule is an idea borrowed from the NFL’s Rooney Rule and hatched in a hackathon. The basic idea is simple: firms commit that they will consider candidate pools that are at least 30% diverse when hiring senior associates and partners, promoting into equity partnership, and filling management positions. But as Lisa Kirby, chief intelligence and knowledge sharing officer at Diversity Lab, explains, there is more to it than a simple percentage. Kirby, a former lawyer who oversees Mansfield Rule certification, joins host Bob Ambrogi to explain what the Mansfield Rule is, how it promises to drive diversity in law firms and legal departments, and how its scope and reach are expanding.  Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.  A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Ep 127: How An Idea Borrowed from Football Is Driving Law Firm Diversity

LawNext is a weekly podcast hosted by Bob Ambrogi, who is internationally known for his writing and speaking on legal technology and innovation. Each week, Bob interviews the innovators and entrepreneurs who are driving what’s next in the legal industry. From legal technology startups to new law firm business models to enhancing access to justice, Bob and his guests explore the future of law and legal practice.

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