Exploring AI-Powered Litigation with FileRead's Chan Koh and Justin Brownstone
Mar 17, 2025
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Chan Hee-Koh, CEO of FileRead, and Justin Brownstone, Strategic Partnership Lead, dive into the transformative world of AI in litigation. Inspired by Chan's family experiences during the 2008 housing crisis, they discuss how FileRead aims to make legal processes more accessible and efficient. The duo highlights the importance of building trust amid industry skepticism about AI. They also share insights on the company’s recent growth, including a $6 million funding round, and their vision for a standalone AI litigation platform that enhances document review and uncovers hidden narratives.
Chan Koh's personal motivation for creating FileRead stems from witnessing his family's struggles during the 2008 financial crisis, highlighting the need for accessible legal services.
The podcast discusses how AI advancements are reshaping the legal industry, enabling more efficient document handling and addressing the unique needs of legal professionals.
Deep dives
Innovative Conversations at Legal Week
The hosts engage in a light-hearted discussion about their plans for Legal Week, highlighting favorite activities and events scheduled around the conference. One notable recommendation is to visit Angelina in Paris for its exceptional hot chocolate, now available in Midtown Manhattan, showcasing the blend of personal anecdotes with professional insights. Moreover, the conversation emphasizes the importance of networking at events like Legal Week Eve, where attendees can connect informally and build relationships that extend beyond the conference. Such gatherings provide valuable opportunities for industry professionals to share knowledge and explore potential collaborations.
Inspiration Behind FileRead
FileRead's CEO, Chan Koh, shares his personal motivation for founding the company, rooted in his family's experience during the 2008 financial crisis, which led to significant hardship due to a lack of access to legal services. This experience sparked his desire to develop a platform that addresses the barriers to legal assistance, especially in litigation such as e-discovery. The purpose of FileRead centers on streamlining the litigation process by enabling professionals to quickly uncover key facts and insights from vast amounts of data. By focusing on enhancing access to legal services, FileRead aims to reduce the uncertainty that often accompanies the legal workflow.
Challenges and Enhancements of Legal Tech
The podcast highlights the significant challenges facing the legal industry in adopting technology, particularly in litigation, while also noting the shift towards greater openness to AI-driven tools. Chan and Justin discuss how recent advancements in AI, including large language models, are reshaping the legal landscape and providing more effective means to handle documents and case facts. The conversation also touches on the importance of understanding the unique needs and workflows of legal professionals to build appropriate solutions. By doing so, FileRead aims to align its innovations with the actual pain points experienced by attorneys and staff in their daily practices.
Roadmap and Future Vision for FileRead
The discussion includes an overview of FileRead's future plans, which focus on developing a standalone platform to bypass existing limitations within traditional systems like relativity. This platform will enable users to analyze large volumes of documents and produce useful legal outputs such as fact memos and chronologies without being constrained by previous systems. Additionally, FileRead is committed to creating workflows that specifically address litigation needs, aiming to automate tedious review processes and increase efficiency. As the legal tech landscape continues to evolve, FileRead's ongoing efforts will emphasize adaptability and responsiveness to the needs of modern legal practices.
This week we welcome Chan Hee-Koh, CEO and co-founder, and Justin Brownstone, Strategic Partnership Lead at FileRead. As legal professionals and tech enthusiasts gear up for LegalWeek, the conversation starts with some lighthearted banter about the best places to visit in New York—including a passionate endorsement of Angelina in Paris' hot chocolate. However, the discussion quickly turns toward the evolving role of AI in the legal industry and how FileRead is shaping the future of litigation technology.
Chan shares the deeply personal story that inspired FileRead’s creation: his immigrant family’s experience during the 2008 housing crisis. Seeing how legal services were out of reach for many due to the complexity and cost of litigation, he set out to develop a platform that could make legal discovery and fact-finding more accessible and efficient. FileRead focuses on litigation-specific AI applications, aiming to streamline document review, build stronger factual narratives, and uncover hidden stories within vast amounts of case data. The discussion also touches on the industry's skepticism toward AI and the need for legal tech companies to build trust and demonstrate real value.
The conversation then turns to FileRead’s recent growth and roadmap for 2025. Having secured a $6 million seed funding round and a strategic partnership with Simplify, the company is expanding its capabilities beyond Relativity to offer a standalone AI-powered litigation analysis platform. Justin highlights how FileRead’s technology goes beyond standard eDiscovery tools by enabling instant document analysis, chronology building, and memo drafting—tasks that traditionally take weeks of manual work. The team is also working on developing litigation workflows that will automate complex fact-checking processes, helping lawyers assess case strengths and identify missing evidence more efficiently.
A key theme of the episode is the legal industry’s slow but inevitable adoption of AI. Chan and Justin discuss how legal workflows are fundamentally different from those in other industries due to the uncertainty and unpredictability of litigation. Unlike transactional law, where contracts and compliance processes are more standardized, litigation involves a constantly shifting landscape where new evidence and legal arguments can completely change the direction of a case. The hosts and guests explore how AI is beginning to bridge the gap between human expertise and technological efficiency, making legal work more strategic and less burdened by repetitive document review.
As the episode wraps up, the hosts reflect on the rapid evolution of legal technology. Greg and Marlene note that while AI has been discussed in legal tech for years, the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) have dramatically accelerated in just the last two years. Chan and Justin acknowledge that staying ahead in this fast-moving space requires constant experimentation and adaptation. However, they emphasize that while technology can enhance legal work, people remain at the center of the industry. AI should be seen as a tool that empowers attorneys rather than replaces them. To learn more about FileRead, visit FileRead.com, or reach out directly to Chan and Justin via email. Listen on mobile platforms: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube