Stories are increasingly common of lawyers who leave law practice to start legal technology companies, but few achieve the level of success as an entrepreneur of Matt Spiegel. He was a criminal defense lawyer in 2009 when he founded MyCase, one of the earliest cloud-based law practice management companies. In 2012, he sold MyCase to AppFolio, and then left the company in 2015 to start a software company that helped organizations manage trade shows and events. In 2017, he returned to law to start his current company, Lawmatics, a client relationship management (CRM) platform for law firms.  Spiegel was previously on episode 16 of this podcast in 2018, not long after he founded Lawmatics. He developed the product because he saw a gap in the legal market for software that would help firms automate their marketing and run their businesses as sales organizations. In the years since, he has raised $12.5 million in funding, expanded the platform with time-and-billing and e-payments capabilities, and added a generative AI feature to help law firms create and edit client emails and email marketing campaigns.  In this episode of LawNext, Spiegel shares his story as a serial legal tech entrepreneur, discusses why he founded Lawmatics, describes how the platform automates legal marketing and relationship management, and talks about his future plans for the company and the platform.     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. Universal Migrator, the easiest way to move your firm’s data and documents from one app to another. Trial Pad, an easy-to-use app to organize, annotate, and present evidence   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

It has been nearly a year and a half since Sheryl Hoskins joined Litera as its new CEO in April 2022. She came into that role following a period in which the company saw significant growth, fueled in part by a series of some 17 acquisitions, through which the company expanded from a primary focus on document technology into such areas as contract review, transaction management, firm intelligence, talent management, governance, and more.  Since then, she has continued to drive further growth, most recently laying out an ambitious strategy around generative AI that will bring a series of product releases and enhancements over the coming months. Today, Litera is a company with more than 2.3 million global users, nearly 1,000 global employees, and 15,000 global customers, including 99 of the Am Law 100 and 90% of the largest law firms worldwide.  Before coming to Litera, Hoskins had more than 20 years of experience in the global technology industry and an established track record managing global teams. She spent the first decade of her career at General Electric and McKesson Corp, where she held domestic and international leadership roles. Most recently, she was CEO of restaurant management platform Upserve. She also spent six years as an active-duty officer in the U.S. Army.  In her first-ever appearance on a podcast, Hoskins joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss her career, her decision to join Litera, the state of the company today, and her vision for its 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, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Universal Migrator, the easiest way to move your firm’s data and documents from one app to another. Trial Pad, an easy-to-use app to organize, annotate, and present evidence   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Recently in Orlando, Fla., at ILTACON, the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi recorded a series of brief live interviews with some of the legal tech companies that were in attendance. Last week on this podcast, we featured the first set of those interviews – with 12 of the legal tech startups that were participating in ILTACON’s Startup Hub.This week we are featuring interviews with some of the established legal tech companies that were attending the conference.   In these 11 short interviews, we speak with:  David Wong, chief product officer, Thomson Reuters.  Mike Fouts, chief business officer, ShareFile. Carol Lynn Grow, co-owner and COO, LawToolBox. Ted Theodoropoulus, CEO, Infodash. Jerry Levine, chief evangelist and general counsel at ContractPodAI. Monica Harris, product business manager, Cellebrite Enterprise Solutions. Ahmed Shaaban, cofounder and managing director, Fulcrum Global Technologies. Hossein Jabbar, CEO, PaayaTech.  Richard Sayles, head of data analytics, Sapling Data. Michael Murray, director of technology, Veritext. Daniel Bonner, director of client solutions, Level Legal. Be sure to also listen to last week’s interviews with the legal tech 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, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Universal Migrator, the easiest way to move your firm's data and documents from one app to another. Overture.Law, The first attorney-to-attorney referral platform that lets you easily generate referral fees for clients you can’t serve. Trial Pad, an easy-to-use app to organize, annotate, and present evidence If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

LawNext host Bob Ambrogi is just back from Orlando, Florida, where he attended ILTACON, the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association. Mic in hand, he recorded a series of brief interviews with some of the legal tech companies that were in attendance. Over the next two episodes of this podcast, we will share those interviews, starting today with the legal tech startups at ILTACON.  Once again this year, the conference featured a Startup Hub in the exhibit hall, where 27 startups had booths showing their products. Although Bob was not able to interview all 27, he did have the opportunity to speak briefly with a dozen of them. Today’s episode features those 12 brief interviews. We speak with: Joshua Aaron, CEO and cofounder, Aiden Technologies. Anthony Seale, CEO, Legatics. Yannic Kilcher, cofounder and CTO, DeepJudge. James Ding, CEO and cofounder, DraftWise. William Dougherty, cofounder, Capacity. Horace Wu, CEO and founder, and Paul Farrell, director of customer success, Syntheia. Noah Wittman, cofounder and  CEO of Priviom. Ariel Nacson, cofounder and chief customer officer, CiteRight, together with Colin LaChance, CEO, Jurisage Inc. Mat Rotenberg, cofounder and CEO, Dashboard Legal. Yohei Fujii, cofounder and CEO, BoostDraft. Floor Blindenbach, founder and CEO, Organizing4Innovation.  Julien Steel, head of product, Henchman.  In the next episode, we’ll feature interviews with some of the established legal tech companies that were there.    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.   Nota, the online business banking platform designed specifically for solo and small law firms. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Universal Migrator, the easiest way to move your firm's data and documents from one app to another. Overture.Law, The first attorney-to-attorney referral platform that lets you easily generate referral fees for clients you can’t serve.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Joe Green and John Scrudato from Gunderson Dettmer join host Bob Ambrogi on LawNext to discuss the development of their homegrown generative AI app called ChatGD. They share the reasons behind creating their own AI app, its functionalities, and the benefits of using a platform agnostic app. The episode emphasizes the importance of lawyers developing AI skills and the potential impact of generative AI on the legal industry.

Today’s episode offers a different perspective on the DoNotPay controversy – and ended up having an unexpected twist.   Earlier this year, DoNotPay, which described itself as the world’s first robot lawyer, and its founder Joshua Browder became the subject of harsh criticism after paralegal Kathryn Tewson tested several of DoNotPay’s self-help legal apps and concluded they were little more than smoke and mirrors – in some cases getting the law wrong, in others failing even to deliver the promised output.  In the wake of Tewson’s allegations, this podcast recorded an exclusive interview with Browder, in which he called the criticism “a bit of a nothingburger.” I followed that Interview with one with Tewson, in which she described in detail how she tested the DoNotPay products and responded to Browder’s dismissal of her critique.  Following those events, our guests today, Maya Markovich, executive director and cofounder of the Justice Technology Association and executive in residence for Justice Tech at Village Capital, and Tom Gordon, executive director of Responsive Law, an organization that represents the consumers’ voice in the legal system, co-authored an op-ed in which they argued that reforms in the regulation of the practice of law, such as those implemented in Utah, could have prevented the DoNotPay debacle, since DoNotPay would have had to have been licensed and regulated. They submitted their op-ed to the American Bar Association’s Center for Innovation, which agreed to publish it in the Center’s biannual innovation trends report, slated to be released Aug. 1. In anticipation of that publication, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi recorded the interview you’re about to hear with Markovich and Gordon, in which they discussed their op-ed and their views more broadly on regulatory reform. The interview was scheduled to post Aug. 1, in conjunction with the op-ed’s publication that day.  But then the plan hit an unexpected twist. Instead of publishing the op-ed that day, the Center notified the authors that it had canceled the publication because of what it described as “political challenges” within the ABA, but that it had neglected to inform them of that.  Because this interview was recorded before the ABA canceled the op-ed, you will hear references to the ABA’s publication of the op-ed. But since that never happened, Markovich and Gordon allowed us to publish the op-ed on LawNext. Ambrogi has also written a blog post detailing the whole sordid story.  Show links:   Opinion: DoNotPay Controversy Illuminates Urgent Need for Regulatory Reform. Citing ‘Political Challenges,’ ABA Innovation Center Cancels Op-Ed Advocating Regulatory Reform; In An Exclusive, We Have the Piece They Wouldn’t Publish. 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.   Nota, the online business banking platform designed specifically for solo and small law firms. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Universal Migrator, the easiest way to move your firm's data and documents from one app to another. Overture.Law, The first attorney-to-attorney referral platform that lets you easily generate referral fees for clients you can’t serve.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

On July 18, 2023, the top legal officers of three Boston-area technology companies came together for a live panel discussion about the city’s unique contributions to the legal tech landscape, moderated by LawNext host Bob Ambrogi. The panelists graciously agreed to allow LawNext to record the conversation, and this episode is that recording. The three panelists are: Margaret K. Minister, general counsel for Evisort, an AI-driven contract lifecycle management company that was founded out of Harvard Law School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  William “Mo” Cowan, chief legal and external affairs officer at Devoted Health, a tech-enabled all-in-one healthcare company founded to dramatically improve overall health and well-being for seniors by caring for them like family. Cowan is a former interim U.S. senator from Massachusetts.  Matt Rowe, chief legal officer at Parallel Wireless and former general counsel to Shoobx, the equity management platform acquired by Fidelity in January 2023.  The panel took place as part of the inaugural meeting of LegalTech Boston, a group formed to bring together the community of those involved in legal tech in the area. The event was hosted by the law firm Gunderson Dettmer and sponsored by the professional training company SkillBurst Interactive.  The first voice you’ll hear on this recording is that of Joe Green, chief innovation officer at Gunderson Dettmer. Following Joe is Anusia Gillespie, chief strategy and growth officer at SkillBurst Interactive, and the driving force behind organizing this event. Because it was a live event, you will also hear members of the audience making comments and asking questions.  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. Nota, the online business banking platform designed specifically for solo and small law firms. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Universal Migrator, the easiest way to move your firm's data and documents from one app to another. If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Recently, Derek Miller, a veteran legal technology executive who, as president and CEO of inData Corporation for nearly three decades, oversaw Trial Director, one of the most widely used trial-presentation software products ever, joined Lit Software, the developer of a suite of litigation apps for iPad and Mac, as chief growth officer, to help drive the company’s continued expansion, particularly into larger firms, corporations and insurance companies. Lit Software, founded in 2010 by Ian O’Flaherty and Tara Cheever, is the company that developed TrialPad, trial presentation software that was the first legal-specific app developed for the iPad. It went on to develop TranscriptPad, for reviewing transcripts; DocReviewPad, for reviewing documents; and ExhibitsPad, for organizing trial exhibits. Its Lit Suite bundles these apps in a single subscription.  Given that Miller’s joining the company represents a bridge, of sorts from established trial software to a newer generation of mobile-first products, it seemed an apt occasion to take a deeper dive into the trial software market — where it’s been, where it is, and where it’s heading. To do that, Derek Miller and Tara Cheever join host Bob Ambrogi to share their experiences and perspectives.    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. Nota, the online business banking platform designed specifically for solo and small law firms. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Universal Migrator, the easiest way to move your firm's data and documents from one app to another.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

In a first for a state bar, The Florida Bar is providing its entire membership of more than 111,000 lawyers with access to legal trust accounting software – a move designed to both help lawyers better comply with trust accounting rules and help protect members of the public from trust accounting errors.  The initiative was spearheaded by F. Scott Westheimer, a partner in the Sarasota firm Syprett Meshad, who was sworn in June 23 as the bar’s new president, and it was made possible through a relationship between the bar and the legal financial management company Nota, owned by M&T Bank.  On the latest LawNext, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by Westheimer, together with Paul Garibian, the CEO of Nota, to discuss this precedent-setting initiative and what it could mean for lawyers and the public in Florida.  Florida lawyers interested in learning more about Nota’s availability in their state can do so at this link.   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.  Nota, the online business banking platform designed specifically for solo and small law firms.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Universal Migrator, the easiest way to extract, query, and transfer practice management.   If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.  

In October 2020, legal industry veterans Joe Borstein and Paul Stroka set out to change the legal tech sales paradigm by founding LexFusion as a go-to-market representative of a curated collection of companies across major categories of legal technology. As the company nears its third anniversary, Borstein joins LawNext to reflect on its successes and failures and to share where it is today. In addition, Borstein shares his perspective on the recent acquisition of Casetext by legal tech behemoth Thomson Reuters for $650 million in cash. As it happens, not only was Casetext one of the companies that LexFusion represented, but Borstein is a former executive of Thomson Reuters, where he worked as global director of Thomson Reuters Legal Managed Services (the former Pangea3).  Given that the Casetext deal was driven by its development of CoCounsel, an AI legal assistant powered by GPT-4 and developed in cooperation with GPT’s developer OpenAI, Borstein also offers his views on the impact he sees generative AI having on the legal industry broadly and on the conversations he is having with law firm and corporate legal leaders.   This is Borstein’s fourth appearance on LawNext. His previous episodes were: On LawNext Podcast: LexFusion’s Joe Borstein and Casey Flaherty on the 2022 Legal Market in Review. On LawNext: Joe Borstein and Basha Rubin on the Launch of LexFusion. LawNext Episode 38: EY’s Purchase of Pangea3, with Pangea3’s Joe Borstein and Ed Sohn.   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.    Nota, the online business banking platform designed specifically for solo and small law firms.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw; the e-payments platform Headnote; and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Sage Timeslips, trusted by solo and small firms for nearly four decades, offers robust functionality, customizable reports, and the ability to capture time and expenses on the go. If you enjoy listening to LawNext, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.