Ep 033: AJ Shankar, Founder and CEO of Everlaw

Everlaw is an e-discovery company that has attracted the interest of some big-name Silicon Valley venture capital firms, raising nearly $35 million in the last three years. It was the first legal technology company to receive an investment from Andreessen Horowitz, a firm known for backing a wide-ranging portfolio of successful companies such as Facebook Twitter, Airbnb, Box, Skype and Slack. Its $25 million Series B round last July was led by Menlo Ventures, one of the earliest Silicon Valley venture firms that also has a diverse portfolio that includes Uber, Roku, and Warby Parker.

Our guest this week, Everlaw’s CEO AJ Shankar, was a computer scientist with a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, when he founded Everlaw in 2011 as one of the earliest cloud-based e-discovery platforms. In a crowded e-discovery market, he believes that Everlaw stands out for its intuitive user interface, split-second speed, and range of features that span the e-discovery process from data uploads to trial preparation.

While working towards his doctorate, Shankar spent time as a technical expert at a national plaintiffs class-action law firm. Seeing the difficulties lawyers faced in sifting through massive quantities of data, he saw an opportunity to develop a better approach. That experience gave rise to Everlaw.

Shankar graduated from Harvard University magna cum laude in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics and computer science. He received his doctorate in computer science from U.C. Berkeley in 2009. Prior to founding Everlaw, he cofounded Modista, a company that made shopping for apparel more intuitive.

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