The Social Radars Founder Mode: Jake Heller, Founder & CEO, Casetext
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Aug 29, 2025 Jake Heller, Founder and CEO of Casetext, shares his journey in transforming legal technology and navigating through multiple pivots over ten years. He reveals how an intensive weekend of experimentation with GPT-4 led to a groundbreaking change in direction for the company. Heller discusses the challenges of steering a well-established team towards innovation, the importance of collaboration with OpenAI, and the emotional milestones tied to a successful exit. The conversation highlights how modern solutions can dramatically improve legal research and client representation.
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From Law Firm To Startup
- Jake left a big law firm after building internal tools and being told the firm owned his code.
- He then started Casetext to apply modern tech to make legal work faster and more effective.
An 'MRI' For Law
- Jake framed the mission as building an "MRI for law" to enable better client outcomes.
- The goal was to make lawyers more effective so clients receive improved justice.
Early AI Work Built Credibility
- Casetext experimented with NLP and ML from 2016–2017 and became known in the small legal-AI community.
- That visibility led OpenAI to include them in early testing because they had domain data and users.