LawNext

In the United States, over 90% of civil legal needs go unrepresented – a staggering justice gap that leaves millions of people facing eviction, domestic violence, wrongful conviction and other urgent legal crises without access to an attorney. For these individuals, the difference between getting legal help or going without can literally be the difference between safety and harm, between keeping a home and losing everything. One year ago, Thomson Reuters launched its AI for Justice program to help address this crisis by providing legal aid organizations with access to CoCounsel, its professional-grade AI legal assistant, along with specialized training and support. The results have been significant: attorneys are saving up to 15 hours per week, organizations are serving as many as 50% more clients daily, and urgent case materials are being prepared up to 75% faster. But more importantly, these efficiency gains are translating into real-world impact  – domestic violence victims receiving protection orders more quickly, wrongfully evicted tenants getting back into their homes before their possessions are destroyed, and innocent people in prison having their exoneration petitions filed years sooner. In this episode of LawNext, host Bob Ambrogi talks with two people at the forefront of this initiative:  Laura Safdie is head of innovation for legal at Thomson Reuters and has been championing access to justice through technology since her days at Casetext, where she was a cofounder.  Pablo Ramirez is executive director of the Legal Aid Society of San Bernardino, a small organization of 45 staff members serving over 9,000 people a year in one of California's largest counties.  Together, they share powerful stories of how AI is enabling legal aid lawyers to be more efficient and more effective in doing what they came to this work to do – fighting for their clients.  They discuss the three pillars of the AI for Justice program  – access, support and scale  – and how Thomson Reuters is working to create a blueprint that can be replicated across the legal aid community. They also tackle the challenges that remain, from overcoming fear and skepticism about AI to reaching a highly disaggregated network of small, resource-strapped organizations. And they explore the bigger question: Can AI actually help close the justice gap, or are we just nibbling at the edges of an ever-growing problem?   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, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). Eve, taking care of the tasks that slow you down so you can operate at your highest potential   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Andy Seavers, Co-founder and CEO of Case Status, shares insights from his experience in legal technology and client experience. He unveils the AI-driven Client Intelligence platform, designed to shift law firms from reactive to predictive engagement. Seavers discusses the importance of communication in achieving faster, better settlements, and outlines his vision of a 'future firm' in his new book, emphasizing leadership and operational excellence. He also explores how firms can modernize to stay competitive in the evolving legal landscape.

Nearly two years ago on this podcast, we discussed the American Arbitration Association’s innovation initiatives – and specifically its embrace of generative AI – with Bridget Mary McCormack, who became its president and CEO in 2023 after having been chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, and Diana Didia, its chief information and innovation officer. On today’s episode, McCormack and Didia – now executive vice president and chief technology and innovation officer – return for an update on innovation at the AAA.    In that prior podcast, McCormack and Didia spoke extensively about the AAA's innovation culture and their early experiments with gen AI. At the time, McCormack said that anyone who thinks they know where gen AI is going, even next week, is fooling themselves. While that may still be true, the AAA has certainly made some bold moves in that direction. Most notably, just a few days before we recorded this episode, the AAA announced something unprecedented in the dispute resolution world – an AI-powered arbitrator that it is launching in November. This is not just another AI tool to assist lawyers or arbitrators. This is an AI system that will evaluate case merits, generate recommendations, and prepare draft awards — with human arbitrators validating and signing off on final decisions before they are issued. In today’s conversation with host Bob Ambrogi, McCormack and Didia dive deep into how this AI arbitrator works, what it means for the future of dispute resolution, and how it fits into the AAA's broader innovation strategy as the organization approaches its 100th anniversary next year. They also explore the cultural transformation within the AAA that has enabled these technological advances and what is coming next in their AI-native vision for dispute resolution.  Related episodes: On the latest LawNext: Sociologist Rebecca Sandefur on Enhancing Access to Justice. On LawNext: How A New Kind of Justice Worker Could Narrow the Justice Gap, with Nikole Nelson, CEO of Frontline Justice.  On LawNext: CEO Nikole Nelson Returns with An Update on Frontline Justice’s Mission to Empower Justice Workers and Bridge the Justice Gap. 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, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). Paxton, Rapidly conduct research, accelerate drafting, and analyze documents with Paxton. What do you need to get done today?    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

With as many as 120 million legal problems going unresolved in America each year, traditional lawyer-centered approaches to access to justice have consistently failed to meet the scale of need. But what if the solution is not just about providing more legal services — what if it lies in fundamentally rethinking who can provide legal help? In today’s episode, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by two of the nation’s leading researchers on access to justice: Rebecca Sandefur, professor and director of the Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University and a faculty fellow at the American Bar Foundation, and Matthew Burnett, director of research and programs for the Access to Justice Research Initiative at the American Bar Foundation and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.  They argue that the access to justice crisis is actually a crisis of democracy. As cofounders of Frontline Justice, they have been pioneering research on "justice workers" — community members trained to help their neighbors navigate legal issues. Their recent article in the South Carolina Law Review, “Justice Work as Democracy Work: Reimagining Access to Justice as Democratization,” makes a provocative case: When people cannot access their own law, democracy itself fails. They present compelling evidence from Alaska, where nearly 200 community justice workers now serve over 40 rural communities, achieving a 1-to-25 return on investment while dramatically expanding legal aid's reach. In today’s conversation, Sandefur and Burnett discuss the mounting evidence for justice worker effectiveness, including research from the U.K. demonstrating that trained non-lawyers often outperform attorneys on specialized tasks. They also discuss recent breakthroughs — including unprecedented support from both the Conference of Chief Justices and the American Bar Association — and examine what obstacles remain.  Sandefur and Burnett challenge the legal profession's monopoly on law, arguing that regulatory capture has estranged Americans from their own justice system. They envision justice workers as agents of democratization, expanding not just who can access legal help, but who can participate meaningfully in working democracy.  Related episodes: On the latest LawNext: Sociologist Rebecca Sandefur on Enhancing Access to Justice. On LawNext: How A New Kind of Justice Worker Could Narrow the Justice Gap, with Nikole Nelson, CEO of Frontline Justice.  On LawNext: CEO Nikole Nelson Returns with An Update on Frontline Justice’s Mission to Empower Justice Workers and Bridge the Justice Gap.   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, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). Paxton, Rapidly conduct research, accelerate drafting, and analyze documents with Paxton. What do you need to get done today?    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

As Leslie Witt took to the stage Sept. 3 to deliver the keynote at Kaleidoscope, 8am’s inaugural customer conference, it was the culmination of a whirlwind summer. It had been just four months since she had joined the company formerly known as AffiniPay as chief product officer, responsible for leading product transformation and strategy for established legal tech brands LawPay, MyCase, CASEpeer and Docketwise. In the intervening 16 weeks, the company had undergone a major rebrand and finalized details of its first major conference. Now, two weeks after the rebrand and as the conference got underway, Witt stood before the keynote audience detailing the company’s newest product initiatives, including its upcoming launch of its generative AI-driven 8AM IQ.  Not long after Witt wrapped up her keynote, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi sat down with her live for this extended conversation. They spoke at the Kaleidoscope venue in Austin in a recording studio provided by 8am, where they discussed her background and career, her reasons for joining 8am, and the product announcements she had made earlier that day. Those announcements included the beta launch of an AI “Chat with Cases” feature that allows lawyers to ask questions of and search their case files, the integration of three core 8am products — LawPay, MyCase and SmartSpend — on a single technology platform, and more.  Before joining 8am in May, Witt had more than two decades of experience in leading product teams. Most recently, she had served as the chief product and design officer at the mental health and wellness technology company Headspace. She previously held senior positions at Intuit, where she led global design, research and innovation initiatives focused on small businesses.  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, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). Paxton, Rapidly conduct research, accelerate drafting, and analyze documents with Paxton. What do you need to get done today?    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.   Chapters 00:00 Introduction to 8AM and Leslie Witt 01:43 Leslie Witt's Background and Experience 09:53 Brand Transformation from Affinipay to 8AM 15:44 Product Design Philosophy and Customer Engagement 20:22 Platform Integration and New Features 24:57 Future Directions and Industry Impact

Daniel Lewis has witnessed legal technology's evolution from multiple vantage points that few others can claim. As a Stanford law student in 2012, he and classmate Nik Reed co-founded the legal research startup Ravel Law with the audacious goal of taking on LexisNexis and Westlaw using machine learning and data analytics – at a time when such challengers were few and far between. Not only was Ravel Law pioneering in its own right, but it also spearheaded and funded the Caselaw Access Project, an ambitious partnership with Harvard Law School’s Library Innovation Lab to digitize and provide free and open access to every official court decision ever published in the United States.  After Ravel's acquisition by LexisNexis in 2017, Lewis spent the next five years leading product teams within the legal research giant, including as vice president and general manager of its Practical Guidance and analytics products. This dual perspective – startup founder turned corporate executive – helped shape his understanding of what works and what doesn't when building technology for lawyers.  Today, as CEO and global chief executive of LegalOn Technologies, Lewis leads a 600-person company that is tackling contract review with a fundamentally different approach. Rather than relying solely on tech-enabled services or raw AI that can hallucinate legal advice, LegalOn combines large language models with attorney-developed playbooks to help in-house legal teams achieve up to 85% time savings on contract review. The company just raised $50 million, for a total raise of $200 million across multiple funding rounds – which Lewis says makes it the most well-funded AI company focused on in-house contract review  – and announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI to develop AI agents for legal workflows.  In this wide-ranging conversation, Lewis shares hard-won insights about the realities of legal tech entrepreneurship, from the "deranged" confidence required to challenge industry giants as a law student to the leadership lessons learned managing teams through multiple business transformations. He discusses why the current moment represents the most significant opportunity for legal tech innovation in decades, how AI agents will reshape routine legal work, and what he's learned about building technology that lawyers don't just try once but actually integrate into their daily practices.  Related episodes: From Ravel Cofounder to Knowable CEO, Nik Reed Has Learned that Building Quality AI for Legal Takes A Lot of Hard Work.  On LawNext: The Inside Story of the Caselaw Access Project, with Three of the People Who Made It Happen.   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, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). Paxton, Rapidly conduct research, accelerate drafting, and analyze documents with Paxton. What do you need to get done today?    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

The e-discovery company Reveal Data recently announced that it will launch its new generative AI-powered document review platform, called “aji,” in late September. Notably, the company said it is offering full access to the platform at no cost through Dec. 31, in order to enable “the entire legal community to explore and master the next era in GenAI review innovation.”   To discuss the launch of aji, today’s episode features Reveal’s founder and CEO Wendell Jisa, together with the company’s chief technology officer, Matthew Brothers-McGrew. This launch, Jisa says, represents the culmination of a deeply personal 30-year journey in legal tech from delivering photocopies in Chicago during blizzards to leading what he believes is one of the most significant technology companies in the legal industry.    In their conversation with host Bob Ambrogi, Jisa and Brothers-McGrew make the case that generative AI presents the legal profession with the opportunity to become technology trailblazers rather than laggards. Their goal, they say, is to support the profession by democratizing access to AI across firms of all sizes and types.    They also discuss Reveal’s recent launch of Reveal Private Deployment, an initiative to support customers in whatever way they want to deploy Reveal’s software, whether in the cloud, on-premises, or hybrid. At a time when other companies are pushing their customers away from on-premises deployments and into the cloud, Jisa and Brothers-McGrew say this is yet another way in which Reveal is seeking to democratize access by accommodating the interests of all its customers. 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, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). Paxton, Rapidly conduct research, accelerate drafting, and analyze documents with Paxton. What do you need to get done today?    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

This year’s ILTACON, which starts later this week, marks the second anniversary of Harbor, a global expert services company formed through the merger of three long-established legal consulting firms: HBR Consulting, LAC Group, and Wilson Allen, and that formally launched at ILTACON in 2023.    The company, which counts among its clients some 80% of the 200 largest global law firms and 50% of the Fortune 500, has been making waves ever since, further expanding its services, making additional acquisitions, and scoring some notable hires to its executive team, all culminating in the news in June that it had received a majority investment from BayPine LP, a private investment firm devoted to driving digital transformation in market-leading businesses.   Part of what makes Harbor particularly interesting is that it sits at the intersection of corporate law departments, law firms, and technology providers – helping all three get more value from their partnerships. A key focus of the company’s consulting services has been artificial intelligence and on helping organizations prepare their data and infrastructures to support the use of AI.    Our guest today is the CEO of Harbor, Matt Sunderman, who before the merger was CEO of HBR Consulting and, earlier, president of its advisory services. In their conversation, Matt and host Bob Ambrogi explore Harbor's mission to provide legal departments with end-to-end solutions that span strategy, legal technology, operations, and intelligence.    They also discuss the current state of digital transformation in legal – from the opportunities and obstacles around generative AI adoption to the surprising reality that many firms are still only 10 to 40 percent cloud-enabled, and Sunderman offers his perspective on what law firms and corporate legal departments should be doing today to prepare for the next decade.    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, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). Paxton, Rapidly conduct research, accelerate drafting, and analyze documents with Paxton. What do you need to get done today?    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

What happens when a Harvard-trained corporate lawyer, tired of copying and pasting contract language, starts reading about self-driving cars? In Shashank Bijapur's case, it sparked the creation of SpotDraft, a contract lifecycle management company that just raised $54 million in Series B funding and that counts major companies such as Airbnb among its customers. In this episode of LawNext, host Bob Ambrogi sits down with Bijapur, CEO and cofounder of SpotDraft, to explore his journey from White & Case associate to legal tech entrepreneur. It all began with that pivotal New Year's Eve moment – working on due diligence while eating Chinese food and reading about Elon Musk's self-driving cars – that made him realize something fundamental: Cars were driving themselves but lawyers were still stuck copying and pasting contract language. The conversation traces SpotDraft's evolution from its original version as an AI redlining platform to becoming a comprehensive CLM solution. Bijapur shares the hard-won lessons of pivoting when their initial AI approach proved only as accurate as a coin toss, and how co-building with early customers who believed in their vision helped shape the product into what it is today. They also dive deep into how generative AI is transforming contract management, get a preview of SpotDraft's new AI assistant called Sidebar, launching to the public next month, and discuss practical implementation challenges based on insights from SpotDraft's recent survey on AI adoption in legal departments. Looking ahead, they discuss where the CLM market is heading in the age of generative AI. Throughout the discussion, Bijapur reflects on the entrepreneurial journey itself – learning to sell when trained to be demure, developing an appetite for risk after being taught to be risk-averse, and discovering that every startup milestone brings new challenges that require completely different approaches. It's a candid look at both the technical and human sides of building a legal tech company.  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, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). Paxton, Rapidly conduct research, accelerate drafting, and analyze documents with Paxton. What do you need to get done today?    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

If generative AI was the biggest story in legal tech in 2023 and 2024, agentic AI is proving to be the most talked-about topic of 2025. Spurring this, at least in part, has been Thomson Reuters’ announcement of its forthcoming release of a new agentic version of CoCounsel, its AI legal assistant, that will be able to plan, reason and execute complex multi-step workflows for legal professionals. On this episode of LawNext, we will dive deep into this next generation of AI legal assistants with two guests who are at the forefront of this field, leading the development of CoCounsel’s next generation: Emily Colbert and Rawia Ashraf. Both joined Thomson Reuters back in 2013 through its acquisition of Practical Law, where they cut their teeth building practice-focused products for lawyers. Now, they are leading the charge on the evolution of CoCounsel into a new generation of agentic workflows, with Colbert overseeing CoCounsel’s litigation portfolio, while Rawia heading up product development for the transactional and corporate side. In today’s conversation, we'll explore how AI is moving beyond simple question-and-answer chatbots to become something more like a smart associate that can chain together multiple tasks, research cases, draft documents, and walk through complex legal workflows step by step. We'll also talk about the challenges of bringing cutting-edge technology to a profession that values precision and trust, learn more about what's coming this summer in CoCounsel’s next major release for legal professionals, and get Colbert’s and Ashraf’s thoughts on how all of this will reshape the practice of law.    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, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Briefpoint, eliminating routine discovery response and request drafting tasks so you can focus on drafting what matters (or just make it home for dinner). Paxton, Rapidly conduct research, accelerate drafting, and analyze documents with Paxton. What do you need to get done today?,    If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.