LawNext

Gordon Smith has just been appointed to a second five-year term as dean of the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University. Two years after becoming dean in 2016, he told an audience of law school advisors, “I want BYU to be known as, if not the most innovative law school in the country, then one of the most innovative law schools in the country.” As we recounted when Smith was first on LawNext in 2019, he has worked hard to make that vision a reality, launching the nationally recognized LawX legal design lab, developing courses to teach non-traditional skills such as leadership, storytelling, and business ethics, launching clinical programs around unique skills such as entrepreneurship and conflict resolution; and spearheading development of the Law and Corpus Linguistics project. But much has changed in law and legal education since 2019, due predominantly to the pandemic and its impact on how law is taught, how lawyers are licensed, and how legal services are delivered. So as Smith begins his second term as dean, we check in on how the pandemic has impacted the school’s teaching of innovation and entrepreneurship, and ask Smith about his plans for the next five years and his thoughts on the future of legal education and licensing.  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. XIRA.com, where clients find, book and meet with attorneys; and where attorneys get free, fully integrated practice management software. Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.  TrustBooks, the only standalone accounting product designed 100 percent for attorneys and law firms.   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.

No sector of the legal technology market is hotter right now than contract lifecycle management. And while that sector is crowded with companies that are relative newcomers, one of the companies making the biggest waves is 30 years old.  Over the past year, Agiloft, the no-code CLM company, raised $45 million in growth equity funding – its first outside funding ever – named a new CEO and management team, saw its sales increase 124%, and won several industry awards and recognitions, most recently the Business Intelligence Group product Innovation award for its AI Core contract management software.  Joining LawNext today is Eric Laughlin, who took over as Agiloft’s CEO last August. Agiloft’s former CEO for nearly 30 years, Colin Earl, hand-picked Laughlin – who spent many years at Thomson Reuters in a series of executive roles, leading TR’s legal managed services offerings and its corporate segment – to take the company to its next level of growth.  Laughlin and host Bob Ambrogi discuss the CLM market and why it has surged in recent years, and Laughlin shares his view on where his company fits into that market, now and into the future.  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. XIRA.com, where clients find, book and meet with attorneys; and where attorneys get free, fully integrated practice management software. Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.  TrustBooks, the only standalone accounting product designed 100 percent for attorneys and law firms.   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.

You have just been named global chief innovation officer for one of the world's largest law firms. Where and how do you start? That is one of the questions we put to Amol Bargaje, whom Mayer Brown named to that position on Feb. 9, 2021. Coming into this newly created role, Bargaje has plenty of experience on which to draw. He has been at Mayer Brown since 2018 as global director of IT Practice and Client Solutions, and was formerly chief innovation officer at Sullivan & Cromwell and chief information officer at Jenner & Block. Bargaje worked most of his career in IT leadership, but pivoted to focus on innovation in 2016 because he wanted to be in a role that put him shoulder to shoulder with the firm's clients. He joins host Bob Ambrogi to talk about what innovation means to him, why it matters for a firm and its clients, how he conceives and develops innovation initiatives, and what he sees as the most significant trends impacting his firm and the legal industry. 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. XIRA.com, where clients find, book and meet with attorneys; and where attorneys get free, fully integrated practice management software. Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies. TrustBooks, the only standalone accounting product designed 100 percent for attorneys and law firms. 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.

Contract lifecycle management has become one of the hottest sectors of legal tech in recent years, and within that sector, Evisort, founded in 2016, has become one of the hottest companies, experiencing four-times revenue growth in 2020 and having just completed a $35 million Series B funding round, for total funding of $55 million. But Evisort cofounder and CEO Jerry Ting sees his company’s AI-driven technology becoming something more – becoming, in effect, an operating system for companies and legal departments, helping them speed up their contracting and reduce associated costs. So what makes Evisort stand out in this market and what’s ahead for the company and the CLM sector more broadly? Ting joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss those questions and more.

In January 2020, Axiom Managed Services, one of two companies spun off in 2019 from alternative legal services provider Axiom, rebranded as Factor, a move the company characterized as a relaunch, and named a new CEO, Varun Mehta, a veteran of the legal tech industry who had previously helped found the e-discovery managed services firm The Clutch Group. It has been a year of challenges and opportunities for Factor, an ALSP that describes itself as delivering complex legal work at scale. While Mehta could never have anticipated that he was taking the helm in a year that would be defined by a global pandemic, it was also a year in which the company received an investment it characterized as one of the largest in the global legal solutions market, built out a powerhouse management team, and partnered with major law firm Allen & Overy to provide LIBOR remediation. This week on LawNext, Mehta joins host Bob Ambrogi to reflect on his first year as CEO and the company's progress so far, as well as to share his vision for what lies ahead for Factor and for the managed services industry more broadly. 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. XIRA.com, where clients find, book and meet with attorneys; and where attorneys get free, fully integrated practice management software. Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies. TrustBooks, the only standalone accounting product designed 100 percent for attorneys and law firms. 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.

Have you ever wanted to found a tech company but needed the right idea? A California company called LaunchFactory has the ideas and is looking for founders to take them on – including in the legal tech space. The company takes a decidedly unique path to launching companies. Rather than invest in existing startups, it identifies and vets startup ideas and then recruits entrepreneurs to launch them. It provides these founders with $300,000 in seed capital, domain advisors, incubation tools and office space. For 2021, one of the companies for which LaunchFactory is seeking founders is in legal technology, a vertical the company’s founder and CEO Brad Chisum believes is ripe for disruption. A second company this year, involving data privacy, borders on legal tech. On today’s LawNext, we’re joined by Chisum, who founded LaunchFactory after selling his former company to Google for $85 million, and by Alessandro Rinaldi, who, as director of innovation, leads the ideation of new startups. 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. XIRA.com, where clients find, book and meet with attorneys; and where attorneys get free, fully integrated practice management software. Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.  TrustBooks, the only standalone accounting product designed 100 percent for attorneys and law firms.   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.

Barely six months into his new position as senior vice president and general counsel for The Coca-Cola Company, Bradley M. Gayton has taken dramatic action to increase diversity and inclusion among the company’s outside counsel, telling firms that they must meet minimum diversity commitments or face consequences ranging from fee reductions to outright firing.  While even he describes this as a bold move, he is no stranger to bold moves. Before moving to Coca-Cola in September, he spent 29 years at the Ford Motor Company, where he rose from law student intern to become that company’s top lawyer, managing a team of over 600 people across more than 20 countries, and where he developed a track record of innovation, not only around diversity and inclusion, but also in the use of legal technology and in his advocacy for pro bono service and access to justice.  On this week’s LawNext, Gayton joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss his latest diversity initiative as well as his career and his insights on technology and innovation.    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. XIRA.com, where clients find, book and meet with attorneys; and where attorneys get free, fully integrated practice management software. Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.  TrustBooks, the only standalone accounting product designed 100 percent for attorneys and law firms.   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.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Kira Systems, the first company to develop AI-powered contract analysis, technology that is now becoming commonplace in the legal profession. To mark the anniversary, Kira’s cofounders are releasing a book, AI For Lawyers: How Artificial Intelligence is Adding Value, Amplifying Expertise, and Transforming Careers. When CEO Noah Waisberg, a former lawyer, and CTO Dr. Alexander Hudek, a computer scientist, launched Kira in 2011, they thought it would be easy to develop machine-learning software to review contracts. They quickly found out otherwise. It was two years before they had a product to sell and nearly three before they earned a penny of revenue.  This week on LawNext, Waisberg and Hudek join host Bob Ambrogi to share their story of founding and building Kira Systems into one of the world’s leading legal technology companies, used by law firms throughout the world.  They also discuss their new book, the topics it covers, and the “friends” from the legal tech industry who helped them write it.  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.  ASG LegalTech, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. XIRA.com, where clients find, book and meet with attorneys; and where attorneys get free, fully integrated practice management software. Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.  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.

As we begin to look ahead to a post-pandemic world, what will the legal market look like in 2021 and beyond? Has the pandemic’s impact on law firms resulted in a tipping point that will forever alter law firms and the business of law? A report by the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at the Georgetown University Law Center and Thomson Reuters Institute, 2021 Report on the State of the Legal Market, speculates that the combined effects of the pandemic may have so softened partner resistance to fundamental change as to create a tipping point in favor of a significant redesign of our legal delivery systems — including law firms. Joining LawNext this week is the lead author of that report, James W. Jones, senior fellow at Georgetown and director of its Program on Trends in Law Practice. Formerly a law firm managing partner, corporate general counsel, and management consultant to the legal industry, Jones specializes in strategy and trends in the legal profession.   In a conversation with host Bob Ambrogi, Jones details the financial and organization impacts of the pandemic on law firms and shares his thoughts on whether 2020 was indeed a tipping point for 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.  ASG LegalTech, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. XIRA.com, where clients find, book and meet with attorneys; and where attorneys get free, fully integrated practice management software. Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.  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.

Legal technology company AltaClaro describes itself as “rocket fuel for legal skills training. It uses a unique experiential framework based on education science, with mock transactions and live feedback, all done online. Our guest this week on LawNext is AltaClaro’s founder and CEO Abdi Shayesteh, who says he first developed his entrepreneurial bent as an 11-year-old Iranian immigrant helping his father manage a small café in San Diego, and then as a 17-year-old founding a clothing company to support himself through college.   When, later in life, he became a lawyer and saw how poorly prepared new associates were to practice law, he began to research education science and came up with the concept for AltaClaro, a company that combines education science with technology to deliver practical skills training for lawyers. Today, its customers include law firms who use it to train associates and individual lawyers seeking to enhance their skills.  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.  ASG LegalTech, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. XIRA.com, where potential clients find, book and meet with attorneys; and where attorneys get free, fully integrated practice management software. Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.  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.